Is coffee a prebiotic?

Coffee has always been a favorite beverage with the added benefits of increased energy and zing.  However, like all substances which have psychotropic effects, coffee has often been maligned as being unhealthy and even a detriment for your long term health and stability.  However, like many uninformed ideas about psychotropic substances, coffee is also getting a bad rap.  In fact coffee contains many substances which encourage the growth of good microbes in your body while suppressing bad microbes.  However, this is only if you are drinking fresh coffee which has been milled so that any bad beans with fungus and defects have been removed. 

 

A prebiotic is any substance or compounds which encourages the growth of healthy microbes in the stomach and the gut.  The two major substances in coffee which will improve your gut diversity and overall health are butyric acid and Chlorogenic acid.  Butyric acid is a four carbon short chained fatty acid, whihc is produced by certain bacteria in your gut.  The effect of butyric acid is to suppress the growth of bad bacterias and improve the growth of positive bacterias such as lactobacillus and bifidus bacterias.  Butyric acid is so good fo you that people have begun supplementing their diets with butyric acid in order to initiate what is known as "ketosis" or a keto diet in the contemporary popular literature. 

 

However what is a Ketosis?  They tell you that Ketosis happens when your body is used to processing oils instead of carbs.  However, no one ever really tells you how this happens, and its likely the reason no one ever tells you is that no one really knows.  Ketosis probably occurs when your gut begins to switch away from bad bacterias to bacterias which generate butyric acid and hydrogen in your gut.  Having high levels of hydrogen generating bacteria increases your gut diversity because the primary way your body destroys bacteria is through peroxidation -- which is neutralized by hydrogen.  Thus your body begins to to uninflame and also increase its metabolism because your bacteria count in your gut increases exponentially when you have a gut which produces hydrogen gas as one of its fermentation products.

Both butryic acid and chlorogenic acid seemt o improve gut diversity as well as total bacteria count in the gut.  Thus, drinking coffee does not simply increase your metabolism because of the caffeine, but instead also supports a healthy gut.

So why does coffee sometimes cause ulcers or bad breath if its supporting your gut health?  Because, like any food product, when coffee is roasted and left to sit on a shelf for a few weeks or more, the spores which inevitably colonize the coffee begin to multiply.  so regardless of how healthy fresh pure coffee is, by the time it has been sitting in the supermarket shelves for a month, it has already begun to get moldy.  Thus, you are drinking the prebioltic substances in coffee, -- but you are also ingesting a ton of bad spores. 

 

So like all healthy foods, you still have to make sure to ensure the freshness and quality of the food first.  Buying your coffee from a roaster or fresh from the farm is the only way you can ensure that your coffee is only a few days old rather than months old and moldy.