We usually drink it every day with or without milk, with or without added sugar - coffee, which thanks to the Pole Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki, has become a popular drink all over Europe. What effect can drinking coffee have on cholesterol levels?
Coffee is a product that does not contain cholesterol itself, but coffee beans are rich in diterpenes. Lipid compounds: caffestol and caffeoyl, which can raise blood cholesterol and triglyceride values. In addition, they hinder the liver enzymes responsible for the efflux of cholesterol.
Studies have shown that a proper coffee preparation process nullifies the harmful compounds. Such a process is filtration, which removes diterpenes. When coffee is brewed in an espresso machine, the lipid compounds remain on the filter and do not pass into the beverage. As a result, coffee brewed in this way does not raise cholesterol or triglyceride levels. The same is true for instant coffee, where the compounds are lost during the process. The situation is completely different when coffee is brewed the Turkish way, prepared in a piston brewer and cooked in the Scandinavian style. The amount of diterpenes in coffees prepared in this way is high and can contribute to increased plasma lipid levels. Five cups of unfiltered coffee increases cholesterol levels by approximately 0.33 mmol/l. The Dutch researchers extracted a 'lipid factor'-a fatty substance-from boiled coffee. They administered it to the study participants as a 'coffee lipid factor' and concluded that cholesterol levels rose by an average of 23% over six weeks and almost all of it was the harmful LDL cholesterol fraction.
Despite these unfavourable properties of diterpenes, coffee contains polyphenolic compounds whose purpose is to: inhibit lipid oxidation, prevent fat deposition in the vessel walls and prevent the formation of atherosclerotic deposits.
In conclusion, when choosing coffee, one should lean towards filtered drinks that are free of diterpenes. It is worth noting that arabica coffee contains more lipid compounds than robusta.