Coffee waste as a superfood ingredient?

If you’re reading this then there’s a good chance that you are partial to a cup of coffee or two per day and that you know all about the drink’s potential health benefits. Drunk without milk, cream, sugars or sweeteners (no, expensive syrup laden Frappuccinos don’t count in this!), coffee is low in calories – not to mention it’s remarkably tasty too.

But researchers have uncovered that some by-products of the coffee production process have antioxidant effects that far surpass those found in vitamin C.

Could we be witness the birth of the next superfood?

A group from the University of Granada looked into the properties of the epidermis of the coffee bean and leftover coffee grounds and found that they both contained powerful antioxidant and antimicrobial properties.

Both of these by-products of coffee, typically get thrown out, recycled as fertilizer or used as compost.

“They also contain high levels of melanoidins,” says the team’s lead researcher Jose Angel Rufian Henares.

“[These melanoidins] are produced during the roasting process and give coffee its brown colour. The biological properties of these could be harnessed for a range of practical applications, such as prevent harmful pathogens from growing in food products,” he continued.

Sifting through their work – which is available to read via the academic journal Food Science and Technology – the team noted that these melanoidins would have to be removed because they have the potential to interfere with beneficial ‘prebiotic properties’.

But, if they can devise a way to ‘clean’ up the coffee grounds and epidermis then there’s no reason as to why these potentially super products cannot be used as a source of new ingredients.

Move over kale, your time is up! (Maybe)