Coffee drinkers may be getting more than an energy boost. A Finnish study found that people who drank more coffee tended to have less total and abdominal fat, more muscle, and healthier metabolic markers despite having similar BMIs. Higher coffee intake was also linked to lower levels of certain amino acids associated with insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes risk.
What I want to know is, how much cream and sugar can you add before it cancels out the positive effects?
You do you, but if you feel like you need to add additives to your coffee to make it palatable, might I suggest finding a better quality coffee.
Can you also fund the better coffee? Because that shit is expensive.
I have switched to putting caffeine and theanine in water in the morning, then adding flavour and carbonating. Crisp, refreshing, hydrating energy drink, for pennies. Recommend.
You’re right, and unfortunately it’s also difficult to find a good quality coffee that’s Fair Trade too.
Theanine? What’s that do?
Indeed… Sounds like an unfilled niche, when you put it all together like that 🤔
Anyhoo. l-Theanine is one of the active ingredients in various teas, alongside caffeine, and complements the effects of caffeine while also offering neuroprotective effects. You’ll find it in coffee too, but only in trace amounts, where in tea it’s a lot closer to 1:1 (variable by botanical of course). Some light reading I happened across in my excursions:
And, this is a very long-term study - it’s more about the other compounds in coffee and tea than the caffeine and theanine, but it’s a good read and at least tangential to your question: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39772974/
There’s also this meta-study I found while I was looking for the first one, which shows the benefits differ somewhat based on physiology: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37523229/
I hope that answers the question 😂
Damn. That is the best response I could have asked for. Thanks!
Just FYI: all those studies are poorly controlled, underpowered and typical of the junk science around supplements.
Fair cop on some of it, but some I will defend, and the wider point holds. At supplement doses theanine alone has a narrow but consistent effect on reaction time; paired with caffeine it does more, across attention more broadly. Moderate effects, not miracle ones, but they replicate across independent meta-analyses, which is more than most of the supplement aisle can say.
Binning, and cheerfully:
And two of mine, while I’m at it:
Not binning:
Those links were what I’d happened across, not a curated evidence base, and I never claimed the list was exhaustive. A weak cite doesn’t kill a claim, it just means I grabbed badly off the shelf. The claims themselves hold up in much better-conducted work:
Also, “underpowered” is the wrong stick for two. The Saku cohort (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39772974/) is 1155 people followed about fifteen years, and Zhu 2024 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37523229/) pools 33 studies and 389,505 participants. Their weakness is that they’re observational: food frequency questionnaires, healthy-user confounding, and pooling observational studies pools the confounding rather than cancelling it. Real problem, different problem, and I’d rather be criticised for the one I’ve actually got thank you very much.
The curling study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10566444/) is n=22 but crossover, which brings more power per subject than the raw number suggests. Narrow population and sports nutrition has a publication bias issue, but it isn’t junk.
So. The acute attention effects at supplement doses are real, hold up across independent meta-analyses, and are stronger with caffeine than without. Sleep and relaxation effects are not as concrete as the marketing suggests. Neuroprotection is rodent focal-ischaemia models, and that class of result translates to humans badly (if there’s human evidence I haven’t found it). Worth being clear as well that the cohorts above don’t necessarily fill that gap: they measure tea and coffee drinking, not theanine intake, so anything they find could be catechins, chlorogenic acids, the sort of person who drinks green tea, etc.
It’s in tea. Its added to energy drinks cause it helps with the caffeine jitters. It helps smooth things out so you don’t feel like you’re having a panic attack like pre workout does to some ppl.
I was trying to find out why caffeine anhydrous is so much cheaper per serving than a cup of coffee or tea when the source is coffee or tea. My only conclusion is they must use un-saleable types of coffee beans and tea leaves for caffeine extraction. Anyway, DIY energy drinks are stupendous, I can’t countenance paying so much for a can. What’s your preferred carbonation method, a Soda Stream or similar?
In fact, that’s natural caffeine since it comes from the bean or leaf; I use synthetic, which is derived by reacting urea and chloroacetic acid into barbituric acid, from there into theophylline by reacting with dimethylurea and formaldehyde, and finally methylated to get something chemically almost identical to pure caffeine:
I started with the synthetic because I wanted to observe the effects alone, and with l-theanine added; I didn’t want other compounds along for the ride and polluting my results. Natural is much more expensive, too; I find synthetic plus theanine sufficient. For carbon dioxide refills, there’s a guy in my area who exchanges the gas bottles and refills them himself. You could see if you have anyone like that nearby, or, often paintball shops and sports shops that sells paintball gear will be able to refill your cannisters for you.
Carbonator is a “drink mate” - unique from sodastream in that it can carbonate other liquids, not just water, without messing up the mechanism. Of course, I pretty much only carbonate water with it anyway… I’m certainly not gonna try it with milk! (jokes aside I have done juice, that was pretty cool)
A quality 2 lb bag from a well respected roaster that ethically sources their coffee is $37 and is pre ground so you don’t even need to buy a grinder. It will make approximately 64 8-oz cups of coffee. That is less than 60 cents a cup.
What are you talking about, expensive?
If you want a recommendation, I love Mad Priest Coffee roasters based out of Tennessee and ship at a decent price.
I’ve always found that pre-ground coffee dries out faster than whole bean and loses some of the aromatics. I’m really surprised to hear it recommended, but I’m glad you’ve found one you enjoy. I’ll keep that name in my pocket to try, in case I decide to go back to coffee.
Good question. No cream is better:
Most People Ruin the Health Benefits of Coffee (and Tea) Without Realizing It - There’s an Easy Fix
I know! I stopped putting cream and sugar in mine years ago when I realized that. I still do milk and cinnamon though.
Well, that depends on context. If you are drinking coffee before going to the gym adding sugar would even increase it’s positive effects (although complex carbs like cluster dextrin would of course be preferable over sugar)