As you can see, even diet drinks may cause tooth erosion. That is not to say that if you drink a diet soda occasionally you will destroy your teeth, but regular drinking may be a problem. I discussed this study in a previous post (). After that post was published here some folks asked me about coffee, so I decided to do some research.
Unfortunately coffee by itself can also cause some erosion, primarily because of its acidity. Generally speaking, you want a liquid substance that you are interested in drinking to have a pH as close to 7 as possible, as this pH is neutral (). Tap and mineral water have a pH that is very close to 7. Black coffee seems to have a pH of about 4.8.
Also problematic are drinks containing fermentable carbohydrates, such as sucrose, fructose, glucose, and lactose. These are fermented by acid-producing bacteria. Interestingly, when fermentable carbohydrates are consumed as part of foods that require chewing, such as fruits, acidity is either neutralized or significantly reduced by large amounts of saliva being secreted as a result of the chewing process.
So what to do about coffee?
One possible solution is to add heavy cream to it. A small amount, such as a teaspoon, appears to bring the pH in a cup of coffee to a little over 6. Another advantage of heavy cream is that it has no fermentable carbohydrates; it has no carbohydrates, period. You will have to get over the habit of drinking sweet beverages, including sweet coffee, if you were unfortunate enough to develop that habit (like so many people living in cities today).
It is not easy to find reliable pH values for various foods. I guess dentistry researchers are more interested in ways of repairing damage already done, and there doesn't seem to be much funding available for preventive dentistry research. Some pH testing results from a University of Cincinnati college biology page were available at the time of this writing; they appeared to be reasonably reliable the last time I checked them ().
21 comments:
There's also the old trick of adding eggshells to the grounds, the calcium carbonate reduces the acidity. We did this for quite a while, and it definitely mellows the coffee and helps mediocre coffees. It didn't occur to me that heavy cream could do the same.
Better to abandon coffee all together. It screws with adrenalin, which effects blood glucose.
Would a splash of regular old milk (whole of course) have a similar (neutralizing) effect?
As Seth Roberts postulates, the two overriding rules of medical research are 1. First let them get sick, and 2. No cheap remedies.
P.S. I love cream in my coffee - at least a quarter cup or more. It's how my grandma taught us to drink it when we were wee little tikes.
The research literature on the benefits of drinking coffee is mixed, leaning on the side of beneficial effects.
It certainly is not paleo, and absent from most HG cultures.
Milk reduces acidity too, but it contains lactose, which feeds acid-producing bacteria.
Spam comment above by SEO deleted.
It's too early in the day for me to think about this. I'm still drinking my first cup of coffee.
I was reading the new issue of Science News, however, and encountered something interesting--although completely off topic. Pythons apparently use increased levels of three common fatty acids to regulate the size of their internal organs (including heart). The interesting thing is that these faty acids also cause mouse heart muscle to grow (in an apparently healthy way):
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/335620/title/Python%E2%80%99s_heart-restoring_elixir_works_in_mice
The "Not Enough Free Fatty Acids Theory of Heart Disease," anyone?
Do you think coconut milk (no additives) would accomplish the same thing?
I would expect coconut milk to have an alkalinizing effect similar to milk. But, like milk, it also contains fermentable carbs that are metabolized by acid-producing bacteria in our mouths.
Interesting article on “snake oil” David. I am frequently weary of extrapolating across species. For example, birds are generally healthier and longer-living than mammals, even though many live with blood glucose levels that only diabetic mammals would experience.
Btw, cream from grass-fed cows tends to have a yellowish color. That is a good sign!
On the other hand, I hear that cream made from goat milk is always white, no matter what the goats eat.
Hi, Ned--
They are exposing mouse heart tissue to a set of (rather common) fatty acids secreted by snakes, and they are getting healthy heart tissue growth. (Across Class Reptilia to Class Mammalia, which is a pretty distant taxonomic spread--Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.)
This seems to me to be primary data rather than extrapolation--that is, they did the experiment.
Or perhaps the extrapolation you're referring to isn't the snake chemicals/mouse heart experiment, but my suggestion that there might be a connection between these results and heart disease--i.e., making in inference from mouse to human?
I agree that many things don't translate from species to species. But a common biological mechanism that holds across two classes is well worth investigating, as the most probable explanation is persistance of a fundamental mechanism since the time of common ancestry--which goes back a ways for pythons and mice.
In any case, I think it would be ironic if a therapy for heart disease were based on two saturated fats (palmitic and myristic) with a dash of monunsaturated (palmitoleic).
there is nothing richer than a coffee
Brewing cold coffee makes a far less acidic cup of coffee:
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Low-Acid-Coffee
What about whey protein powder? I like the eggshell idea. Ever test with a pH stick? I need to grab some. Scientific Method baby!
Eric
Astrophysics Idiot
This post is a revised version of a previous post. The original comments are preserved here. More comments welcome, but no spam please!
I've read the Chlorogenic Acid in green coffee beans is destroyed during roasting...
Any thoughts on this acid, and whether there's any credible evidence that it supports weight loss? I wouldn't think the evidence amounts to a hill of (coffee) beans, but after reading about alpha-lipoic Acid, there may be something there!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21187189
Hi Ben. Coffee acidity is usually measured in the final product, ready to drink. A lot of substances can be classified as acids, as long as are capable of donating a hydron (a hydrogen variation). Coffee consumption has been shown, I believe, to aid in fat mobilization.
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