What is “green coffee”? Can you make it at home? The answer is: yes, you can! Read on to learn about its many properties and you can have it home made!
You might have heard about green coffee with regard to weight loss diets. Some consider it a must have in your diet if you are trying to lose a little bit of that holiday weight. Is it true though?
First of all, let’s clarify that green coffee is just regular coffee, but one step away from the way you usually see it. The coffee beans of green coffee, in fact, have simply not been roasted yet. Before the roasting process, the beans have a slightly green colour, hence the name.
When beans are “raw” this way, they have less caffeine than roasted beans, but more polyphenols and specifically chlorogenic acid. This particular substance is the one that would help you with the above-mentioned weight loss.
Straight to the point: will green coffee make me thinner?
The reason why green coffee is believed to help in weight loss is because the chlorogenic acid helps preventing the assimilation of some sugars by your body, as stated by the American NCBI institute. It also helps lowering the triglycerides levels in your liver. When your triglycerides levels rise to much, that can cause your metabolism to go slower and contribute to some of the fat some of us tend to accumulate of the abdomen area.
But don’t get too excited: the EFSA (an organ whose role is to check on food safety rules in the European Union) says that this weight loss property isn’t not fully proved. In fact, the sample taken into consideration for the NCBI study was too narrow and not representative of the entire population. EFSA also questioned the methods that had been use in the NCBI research. For these reasons, there is not enough scientifically reliable data to claim with no doubts that green coffee contributes to weight loss.
Yes, here we are again: no miraculous foods that will make those extra pounds go away. We’re back to the good old “healthy diet and lot of exercise”.
What are then the actual good properties of green coffee?
It might not help you to get your weight where you want it to, but green coffee can still be helpful in many other ways! Let’s see how:
- Green coffee has a lot of group B vitamins, which helps to make your skin and nervous and immune system to stay healthy. It also actually enhances your metabolism.
- Its Ph is around 5 (roasted coffee’s Ph is around 3/3.5), and you know that acidic substances are not the best for your stomach
- A lot of polyphenols and other antioxidants can be found in green coffee: great elements to lower your blood pressure and to stop the free radicals
Ok, but how do I prepare green coffee at home?
Drinking green coffee on a regular basis can be very beneficial to yourself. So, let’s see how you can do that.
You can either buy the green coffee bags (they look just like tea bags) or buy the vacuum-sealed “green” coffee beans. The beans you’ll find inside are usually a blend of arabica and robusta varieties mixed together.
Green coffee bags:
- Bring some water to heat, and take it off the heat source just before it starts boiling
- Put the green coffee bag in the hot water
- Let it in for 5 to 10 minutes until the water gets slightly yellow
- Enjoy!
Green coffee whole beans:
- Grind or crush the green coffee beans
- Heat some water and pour it over 2tsp of ground green coffee beans
- Let the infusion rest for 5 to 10 minutes and then filter it
- Before enjoying it you can add a little bit of cardamom or honey
Green coffee is another great way to enjoy coffee. If you are looking for more coffee “alternatives” take a tour in our blog and learn more about, for example, ginseng coffee!
