HCR.20.024 – How can coffee affect health?
Prevention of disease through nutrition is often focused on foods and nutrients, but the choice of beverage is equally important for maintaining health. Coffee is widely consumed worldwide and research consistently shows that coffee has great potential to beneficially affect various health outcomes such as diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Many people have the ambition to influence their own health, but find it difficult to make lifestyle changes. Optimizing coffee intake may be an excellent and easy to implement opportunity to do so. However, details regarding optimal amount and type, and recommendations for specific groups in the society are not available, since it is unclear how coffee benefits health of people. Promising mechanisms include effects of coffee on liver and gut health, which may underlie benefits for several health outcomes. This project is dedicated to unravel the pathway(s) underlying health effects of coffee, find the possible bioactive ingredient(s), and to provide data for evidenced-based advice and population guidelines on beverage intake for all people in the Dutch society. The research in this interdisciplinary consortium can have large societal impact as coffee is a popular beverage in the Netherlands and intake is high. Therefore, even small health effects of coffee can have a large impact on population level, including a lower burden of disease and associated health care costs.
Coffee, Gut, health, Liver, Prevention
|Organisation||Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)|
|Name||Dr. ir. M.R. (Margreet) Olthof|