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I Drink 5-6 Cups Of Coffee A Day: This Is The Only Brand I Trust
If you listen to me on the mindbodygreen podcast, you know that I'm obsessed with coffee. We've recorded more than 500 episodes over the years—and a solid chunk of them have spoken about the health benefits of the brew.
My love affair with coffee started over 25 years ago. I drink it daily, I drink it early, and I drink it often. On a typical day, I'll have around five to six cups.
If I'm going to drink so much of something, I want to feel confident that it's good for my health. So you can imagine how freaked out I was a few years ago when I learned that many coffee beans actually contain mold and microscopic toxins1.
Why I wanted to make a cleaner coffee
Mold can form on coffee beans when they are grown, stored, or transferred in a moist, warm environment. The supply chain of coffee makes it particularly susceptible to mold and the toxic chemicals (mycotoxins) it releases.
According to some analyses, up to 50% of beans tested contain a mycotoxin called ochratoxin A2, which can cause serious liver and kidney issues in high doses. Mycotoxins are also almost impossible to see or taste, unlike the mold you might see from water damage in your house.
The effect that mycotoxin exposure has on humans isn't entirely clear, and there's a level of uncertainty that I, as a coffee lover, am just not comfortable with. I believe in compromise, but not when it comes to what I'm putting into my body.
When I drink something so often, I want to know that I'm giving myself all the best possible benefits—not ingesting anything that is going to potentially negate all the other good things I'm doing.
Once I learned about all the bad stuff like mold, mycotoxins, and other contaminants in coffee, I knew it was time to work on a better product. I started by asking myself the following questions:
- Would it be possible to source a USDA-certified organic coffee that was high in polyphenols and had no mold, mycotoxins, pesticides, and heavy metals?
- Would we be able to test for all of the above?
- Could we find a coffee that meets all of our aforementioned standards and actually tastes great? No one wants to drink healthy coffee that doesn't taste good!
It took over a year, but we found a solution that delivers in full. Enter: clean coffee+.
Our brand-new coffee is handled in a way that reduces the risk of fungal growth and is rigorously tested for mold and mycotoxins, along with other nasties like pesticides and heavy metals. The testing that we do gives me confidence that the product I'm drinking day in and day out has nothing to hide.
As far as coffee is concerned, the only way to get this certainty is to buy from a company that tests its product for mold and mycotoxins. Simply buying organic, while good for human and environmental health, is not enough to ensure that it doesn't contain these contaminants. With third-party testing for hundreds of purity, potency, and sensory tests, clean coffee+ delivers peace of mind with every sip.†
Why I love having it in my routine
Now, I'm a bit of a coffee snob and will only drink a cup if the taste is up to my standards. And clean coffee+ definitely hits all the right flavor notes. It's rich, smooth, and has just the right amount of caffeine: It's not weak, but it also doesn't overpower me.
I'll typically prepare a big batch in my Chemex pour-over every morning to drink black throughout the day. Now that fall is here, I'm thinking about whipping in some chocolate beauty & gut collagen+ for a seasonal treat with extra health benefits to boot.
Not only does clean coffee+ not have any of the bad stuff, so to speak, but it also has more of the good stuff: polyphenols. All coffees are not created equal when it comes to polyphenol levels of all the antioxidant-rich good stuff like:
- Chlorogenic acid: Shown to improve cardiometabolic health3 in humans
- Neochlorogenic acid: Linked to inflammatory balancing effects4 in preclinical studies
- Protocatechuic acid: Found to protect against neurodegenerative disease5 in animal studies
- Coumaric acid: Found to have antioxidant effects6 in cell research
- Ferulic acid: Found to reduce oxidative stress and inflammatory status7 in people with high cholesterol
- Isoferulic acid: Studied for its antioxidant actions8 in preclinical studies
- Rosmarinic acid: Being studied for its hepatoprotective actions9 and supporting a healthy inflammatory status
Our beans are grown and processed in a way that retains more of their beneficial plant compounds. If I'm going to drink coffee, I want to make sure I'm getting as much of those polyphenols as possible—it's like getting extra credit every time I make a cup.
The takeaway
I don't sip tea; I don't dabble in matcha; I'm a coffee drinker through and through. I've had a love affair with coffee for 25 years and have no plans to stop soon. But I know that not all coffee is created equal. Just like I look for 100% grass-fed beef if I'm going to have a burger, I now know to look for coffee that's been tested for mold and is full of antioxidant polyphenols. If I'm going to drink so much coffee, it better be the best—and clean coffee+ delivers. Of the 20+ products we've launched over the last five years, this might be my personal favorite. Cheers to a delicious-tasting, health-forward coffee that you can finally trust.
The mindbodygreen team and I are so excited to share this new product with you. Head here to order your first (but certainly not your last) bag.
9 Sources
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14726276/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7759018/
- https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5710/5/1/11
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7144357/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28745142/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30599319/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29865227/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21941899/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30328397/
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