Coffee may reduce type 2 diabetes - but only if you don’t add sugar
Put the kettle on. A new study has found that drinking coffee could actually help protect you from type 2 diabetes.
A major new study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has found a link between drinking coffee and a lower risk of developing the disease.
But, before you go ahead and excitedly order your favourite caramel Frappuccino from Starbucks, there’s a catch: adding sugar, or artificial sweeteners, can significantly weaken this benefit.
The research
To find out how coffee affects diabetes risk, the researchers looked at the coffee consumption of nearly 290,000 people over 34 years across three major health studies.
Every four years, participants were asked how much coffee they drank and what they added to it – whether that was sugar, sweeteners, cream or milk. They also reported back on their health, including any diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. By the end of the study, 13,281 people had developed type 2 diabetes.
The results
The researchers found that those who drank a daily cup of black coffee had a 10% lower risk of getting type 2 diabetes. And, if you prefer your coffee with milk, good news – that didn’t change the health benefits. However, if you add just one teaspoon of sugar to your coffee, the picture changes.
Those who added sugar saw that 10% risk reduction cut in half to just 5% per cup. And artificial sweeteners weren’t much better, with the risk reduction dropping to around 7% per cup. Meanwhile, non-dairy coffee whiteners didn’t show a clear effect – possibly because not enough people in the study used them.
What this means for us
We already know, from previous studies, that coffee drinkers gain less weight as they age, and caffeine (found within coffee) could also reduce inflammation in the body – which has been linked to type 2 diabetes.
If you want to maximise the potential health benefits of coffee, then this latest study shows it’s probably wise to ditch the sugar and sweeteners.
And if you just can’t face coffee without a little something extra? Stick to milk or cream.
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