There are several factors that can play an important role in establishing a person’s cardiometabolic health, such as blood sugar levels, blood pressure, and body composition, including visceral or abdominal fat, subcutaneous fat, and muscle mass.
Having poor cardiometabolic health can increase your risk of developing health conditions like type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney disease, fatty liver disease, and cardiovascular disease.
Previous research shows it’s possible to improve your cardiometabolic health by making healthy lifestyle choices, such as being physically active, not smoking, and eating a healthy diet.
Past studies have also linked certain foods to better cardiometabolic health, such as leafy greens, fatty fish, berries, and coffee.
Now, a new study published in the European Journal of Nutrition provides more evidence linking coffee consumption to cardiometabolic health.
Researchers found that drinking coffee may help improve a person’s body composition and metabolic markers, such as visceral fat.
For this study, researchers analyzed health data for more than 2,200 participants from the 46-year follow-up of the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966. Study participants were asked questions about their coffee consumption habits and completed numerous health assessments, including body mass index (BMI), waist-to-hip ratio, body fat percentage, and skeletal muscle mass.
“Poor body composition and metabolic health are closely tied to the risk of conditions like type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, which remain among the biggest public health burdens worldwide,” Luca Verroest, doctoral researcher at the University of Oulu in Finland, and lead author of this study, told Medical News Today.
“Much of this risk is shaped by everyday, modifiable factors like diet, so understanding how common dietary components, such as coffee, relate to these markers helps build a more complete picture of prevention, alongside established factors like physical activity and body weight,” he explained.
“Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages globally, and Finland has the highest per-capita consumption in the world, so it’s a highly relevant exposure to study in a Finnish cohort,” Verroest continued.
“Coffee is also far more than just caffeine: it contains over a thousand bioactive compounds, of which many may have biological effects of their own. Yet despite how commonly it’s consumed, we still don’t fully understand how it relates to metabolic and hormonal health.”
— Luca Verroest, lead author
At the study’s conclusion, researchers discovered that study participants who drank the highest amounts of coffee had lower total and visceral fat and better skeletal muscle mass, when compared to participants who did not drink coffee, regardless of them both having similar BMIs.
“(This) suggests that BMI alone may not capture some of the more meaningful differences in body composition associated with coffee consumption,” Verroest said.
“People with the same BMI can have quite different amounts of fat versus muscle, and our findings point to habitual coffee drinkers having a comparatively leaner profile (lower total and visceral fat, more skeletal muscle) that BMI alone wouldn’t reveal,” he explained.
Additionally, consuming higher amounts of coffee was linked to lower circulating levels of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) — a known biomarker for cardiometabolic health that are also linked to an increased risk for obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.
“Coffee itself isn’t a meaningful source of BCAAs, so this isn’t about coffee adding or displacing amino acids in the diet,” Verroest explained.
“Finding that higher coffee consumption correlated with lower circulating BCAA levels in both men and women adds an interesting angle to how coffee might relate to this metabolic pathway, though as a correlational finding, it can’t tell us whether coffee directly improves this clearance process or simply tracks alongside better metabolic health for other reasons.”
— Luca Verroest, lead author
When looking at male vs female participants, Verroest and his team found that in men, higher coffee intake was associated with a more beneficial glucose–insulin profile, as well as increased amounts of total and bioavailable testosterone and sex hormone–binding globulin (SHBG).
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“This was one of the most distinct findings in our study,” Verroest said. “Both total testosterone and SHBG have been linked in other research to a lower risk of conditions like metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes, so this hormonal pattern fits coherently with the more favorable glucose-insulin profile we observed in the same men.”
“Coffee appears to leave a measurable fingerprint on the body’s metabolism and hormones, and that fingerprint looks different in men than in women.”
— Luca Verroest, lead author
“It’s a new piece in the puzzle of how a beverage most of us drink without a second thought may relate to long-term health. That said, this is an observational study, so it shows associations rather than proof that coffee causes these changes,” Verroest added.
MNT spoke with Mir Ali, MD, a bariatric surgeon, bariatric medicine specialist, and medical director of MemorialCare Surgical Weight Loss Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA, who commented that this study’s findings verify what we’ve seen from other studies that caffeine does have some benefit to weight loss and overall health in general, though the specific mechanism is not clearly understood.
“There’s some benefits that we’ve seen from other research in coffee that it does have a mild appetite suppressant effect,” Ali, who was not involved in this study, explained.
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“[Coffee] may stimulate the metabolism to some extent. And in this study, it showed that it stimulates some hormonal function as well. So it’s probably a combination of all of these things that improve visceral fat and other benefits.”
— Mir Ali, MD
As obesity continues to increase worldwide, Ali said it’s important for researchers to continue to find new ways in which people may be able to improve their body composition and metabolic markers as there’s no one thing that works for everybody to improve their weight and their health.
“So the more information we have, different things that may be beneficial, the better, because one thing that may be beneficial to one person may not help another,” he added.
MNTalso spoke with Monique Richard, MS, RDN, LDN, FAND, IFNCP, a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Nutrition-In-Sight, who likewise was not involved in this study.
Richard said it’s important to note that while this is an interesting study, coffee may not be the only contributing hero of the story.
“Because this was a cross-sectional observational study, we cannot say that coffee caused people to have less visceral fat or more muscle, but that it could be associated with the observation,” she explained.
“Coffee is a chemically complex food containing caffeine, chlorogenic acids, trigonelline, and other bioactive compounds, and the biological response may depend on the whole coffee matrix, not simply caffeine alone. There probably isn’t one coffee compound responsible.”
— Monique Richard, MS, RDN
Richard noted that coffee may be one small piece of a much larger metabolic picture.
“I would much rather see coffee complement adequate protein, fiber-rich whole foods, resistance training, physical activity, sleep, and stress management than see someone add several cups of coffee while neglecting those foundational behaviors,” she said.
And Richard also reminded readers that what is in the coffee you’re drinking matters.
“A plain brewed coffee is metabolically very different from a 500-calorie coffee beverage loaded with added sugar, syrups, and saturated fat,” she explained. “We want to consider coffee consumption related to what kind, how much, when, and what is being added to it.”
