Because macchiato is better

Macchiato coffee lovers, this is your revenge! How many times has it happened to you at the bar or at the end of a meal to be teased or scolded because «coffee is drunk pure, pure», or «come on, what are you doing? Do you drink cappuccino?». And instead, there are great reasons so order a macchiato with milk. And science brings them.

First, the scientific community has already amply demonstrated that coffee is a panacea for health, being one source of antioxidants and if drunk before physical activity, it can help to burn better calories and fat.

Now a new study, led byUniversity of Copenhagen in Denmark and published on Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistrysuggests that adding protein – as a drop of milk – can increase i benefits of your coffee break.

Researchers have managed to investigate how the antioxidants present in the cafe, the famous polyphenolsinteracted with the amino acidsthe building blocks of protein, and they discovered that their bond enhances the anti-inflammatory effect of polyphenols.

Let’s start with the basics: polyphenols are found in many foods, including coffee and tea, fruit and vegetables, red wine and beer. Like other antioxidants, previous studies suggest that some polyphenols can prevent and slow down the oxidation of cellsthus protecting our body from disease.

Their task is control inflammationwhich despite what one might think, is one beneficial immune response charged to the called cells macrophageswhich protect the body from infections, problems arise when inflammation gets out of control: in this case, diseases such as type II diabetes, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.

It is well known that caffeic acid (CA) and chlorogenic acid (CGA) they are two polyphenols, which already carry out the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory action, but in this study the amino acid cysteine ​​(Cys) – present in dairy products – has been combined with the two aforementioned polyphenols – present in coffee – to form the CA–Cys and CGA–Cys adducts.

They then used the RNA sequencing to study the immune regulating effects of CA-Cys and CGA-Cys in macrophage cells subjected to artificial inflammation, testing the effect of the two polyphenols alone, then comparing them to a control group of macrophages not exposed to the polyphenols and one exposed to Cys abductees.

As expected, the polyphenols CA and CGA inhibited inflammatory responsesespecially the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) and the cytokines interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF), all compounds and substances with a marked oxidizing action. But it is alone when the polyphenols CA and CGA were combined with the cysteines their anti-inflammatory effects received an additional boost.

For example, the TNF cells exposed to the CA-Cys and CGA-Cys adducts showed 2.5 times less activity to that sustained during exposure to polyphenols alone. The one exception was ROS, which inexplicably increased in the macrophage when the polyphenol-amino acid combination was present compared to when the polyphenol was alone.

More research is obviously needed to understand why and what these findings mean for human health. “Our results can be used as an important reference in the applications of adducts formed from phenolic compounds and amino acids in future functional foods or medicinal products that aim to modulate metabolic, neurological or immune-related diseases», conclude the researchers.

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