Posted on 03/24/2025 12:06:42 PM PDT by Red Badger
A Swedish study found that workplace coffee machines often leave in high levels of cholesterol-raising compounds, unlike drip-filter machines which remove most of them.
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Coffee from workplace machines might be raising your cholesterol more than you think.
A new Swedish study reveals that many common office coffee machines fail to filter out cholesterol-elevating compounds found in coffee, sometimes leaving behind even more than espresso or French press. Depending on the machine and brewing method, the amount of harmful diterpenes like cafestol and kahweol can vary widely, and frequent coffee drinkers may be unknowingly boosting their LDL cholesterol levels.
Cholesterol-Raising Compounds in Workplace Coffee
A new study led by researchers at Uppsala University, in collaboration with Chalmers University of Technology, has found that some workplace coffee machines produce coffee with significantly higher levels of cholesterol-raising compounds. The findings are published in the journal Nutrition, Metabolism & Cardiovascular Diseases.
“Considering how much coffee is consumed in Swedish workplaces, we wanted to get a picture of the content of cholesterol-elevating substances in coffee from these types of machines. We studied fourteen coffee machines and could see that the levels of these substances are much higher in coffee from these machines than from regular drip-filter coffee makers,” says David Iggman, researcher at Uppsala University, who led the study.
“From this we infer that the filtering process is crucial for the presence of these cholesterol-elevating substances in coffee. Obviously, not all coffee machines manage to filter them out. But the problem varies between different types of coffee machines, and the concentrations also showed large variations over time,” Iggman continued.
Cafestol per Cup Coffee Chart
The bars indicate milligrams of cafestol per cup for the volumes 60 ml (espresso), 137.5 ml (coffee machines) and 150 ml (all others). Two samples were taken from the coffee machines 2-3 weeks apart and the dots in the bars represent average values between the two measurement occasions for each machine. Credit: David Iggman
First Study on Office Coffee Machines
It’s already well known that boiled coffee contains high levels of the cholesterol-raising diterpenes cafestol and kahweol. A fact acknowledged in the latest Nordic nutrition guidelines, which recommend limiting boiled coffee. In contrast, drip-filter coffee makers that use paper filters are highly effective at removing these substances.
How well conventional coffee machines, which are found in public environments such as workplaces, filter out these substances had not been investigated up until now. In the study, the researchers studied fourteen coffee machines in break rooms at different workplaces. The coffee used was five regular brands of ground coffee. They took samples from the coffee made by the machines on a number of separate occasions and analyzed the contents. There was a big difference between the machines in terms of the levels of cafestol and kahweol in the coffee they made, but the levels could also differ at different times.
Brewing Machines Showed the Most Risk
The most common type of coffee machine, in the study called a brewing machine, is the one that produced coffee with the highest concentrations of diterpenes. In comparative analyses, the researchers investigated peculator coffee, espresso, French press coffee, boiled coffee, and boiled coffee poured through a fabric filter. The boiled coffee contained the highest levels of diterpenes per cup. Some espresso samples also contained high levels, but there was great variation.
Filtered Coffee Still the Best Bet
“Most of the coffee samples contained levels that could feasibly affect the levels of LDL cholesterol of people who drank the coffee, as well as their future risk of cardiovascular disease. For people who drink a lot of coffee every day, it’s clear that drip-filter coffee, or other well-filtered coffee, is preferable. To determine the precise effects on LDL cholesterol levels, we would need to conduct a controlled study of subjects who would drink the coffee,” says David Iggman.
Facts in Brief
Two samples were taken from each machine every two to three weeks. The coffee varieties included medium roast and dark roast of five common brands of ground coffee. Most of the machines use ground coffee. One or two grind the beans in the machine, but the researchers don’t think that would have any effect on the levels of diterpenes.
We tested 14 machines, including 11 brewing machines and 3 liquid-model machines (lower levels, mixed from a coffee concentrate). For comparison, the same analysis was carried out with some other coffee-making methods such as percolator, French press, boiled coffee, and boiled coffee poured through a fabric filter. In addition, four espresso samples were collected in Gothenburg.
All the coffee samples were analysed at Chalmers University of Technology. The samples were collected by medical student Erik Orrje during spring 2024.
Reference:
“Cafestol and kahweol concentrations in workplace machine coffee compared with conventional brewing methods”
by Erik Orrje, Rikard Fristedt, Fredrik Rosqvist, Rikard Landberg and David Iggman, 20 February 2025, Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases.
DOI: 10.1016/j.numecd.2025.103933
“Stop digging. You already embarrassed yourself by being jerked by some dude at a keyboard.”
“Nonsense. An author can perfectly ask corrections from the magazines and even demand retraction or cancel the publication of the article. “
Stop digging.
Get real. They probably have no knowledge of the publication.
Here is the title of their study:
“I was jerked by a stupid magazine making fake news from a junk science study,”
You were jerked by some magazine headliner writer. True
The study was junk science. False
“If he lets make fake news from his “study”, it’s because he is a dishonnest attention whore and his study is bunk, “
He has ZERO control over who reads his published story and reports on it.
Besides, the article is dated today.
“Agreed, if not for your bogus description of events:”
That is false. Per your words I should demand that you take it down.
Please do so.
Go download the study, read it, and read the conclusion where it make recommendation out of nowhere on how to prepare coffee. You’ll see it IS junk science.
It’s not false, it was accurate. And I never demanded anyone to take anything down. Stop typing while drunk.
“He has ZERO control over who reads his published story and reports on it.”
Again, you are talking nonsense and you make things up on the fly. The author was interviewed and was cited in the article. But he is supposed to have “ZERO control” on it. Yeah sure, talk to my hand.
“And I never demanded anyone”
Your words: “and even demand”
“The author was interviewed “
Please stop making things up.
That was not in the scope of the study.
The people who did the study did not write the headline.
Thank you.
I quickly read the actual paper. The author makes a link between the coffee making methods, LDL Cholesterol, and references a study claiming an increase in LDL Cholesterol, increases the potential for cardiovascular disease, thus increasing the possibility of cardiovascular disease.
So, the actual paper attempts to link coffee making methods, increased LDL, and cardiovascular disease.
How valid the paper linking increased LDL and cardiovascular disease is, I did not investigate.
What’s the point of this study? After all, cholesterol doesn’t cause your arteries to plaque up, it is in your arteries because SOMETHING ELSE is causing inflammation and other damage that the body repairs with plaque. It’s like blaming the presence of firemen on a street where a house burned down for the fire when, in fact, they are there to put out the fire. Blame the cause of the fire (or, in this case, plaques in the arteries), which is too much in the way of carbohydrates in the diet.
We did, too. But it doesn’t take out the black gunk.
“The author makes a link between the coffee making methods, LDL Cholesterol, and references a study claiming an increase in LDL Cholesterol, increases the potential for cardiovascular disease, thus increasing the possibility of cardiovascular disease.
So, the actual paper attempts to link coffee making methods, increased LDL, and cardiovascular disease.”
The paper uses other’s work to provide a frame of reference for their findings. That was not part of the study as seen in their aim and conclusion. They don’t try to make a link. The only say that this could be an overlooked factor.
Their aim: Unfiltered coffee contains high concentrations of cholesterol-raising diterpenes. We aimed to measure the levels of diterpenes in machine coffee.
Their conclusion: Most coffees from workplace brewing machines contain higher diterpene concentrations than paper-filtered coffee, but lower than unfiltered coffee. Intake of insufficiently filtered coffee during working hours could be an overlooked factor for cardiovascular health due to its effect on plasma cholesterol concentrations.
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