Recently, many people have been asking me, whether green (unroasted) coffee can have any positive effect regarding weight loss. The answer is: no, it can’t. Actually, I should’ve ended this article right here. Drinking green coffee makes as much sense as eating raw potatoes, which at most causes a stomachache. Anyway, let me explain everything step by step. . .
For some time now, in both lower and higher tier press (usually the lower tier one), the Internet and some shops, you can find “green coffee for weight loss”. Sponsored articles of this type brag “how a cup of green coffee per day makes you lose a few kilos in just one month”. Green coffee is supposedly the newest discovery of American scientists and apparently a revolutionary weapon against unwanted kilograms. On the market, besides ground and whole bean green coffee, you can find pills with its extract. Of course 1 or 2 of these pills are enough to reduce your size from XL to S or even M in no time. . .
How does it work in practice? Let’s start with explaining what exactly green coffee is. Well, it’s just the same regular coffee that we all know of, but the difference is, that it did not undergo thermal treatment, i.e. roasting. Coffee roasteries (e.g. Single Origin) bring raw, green coffee beans (several dozen kilograms packed in large jute sacs). Roasting these green coffee beans is a task of specialists working at roasteries. Raw coffee beans are put into special machineries, where they are being exposed to air heated up to about 250°C. As a result, coffee beans undergo many different processes that completely change their properties. Suffice to say, that green coffee beans have a dozen aroma-flavor compounds and their roasted counterparts have around 700 of them! So, green coffee is a material used in roasteries and as I mentioned at the beginning, drinking it makes as much sense as eating raw potatoes. If I had to compare the taste of green coffee to something, I would’ve compared it to the taste of mud. Even though, I’ve never tried to drink mud, that’s how I imagine its taste.
However, it seems that something’s up, since someone had to put this product on the market and start advertising it. There is some truth to this whole situation and it’s called chlorogenic acid. It occurs in coffee beans and for example architokes and plums. It has an antioxidiant effect and it hinders absorbtion of carbohydrates, which makes organism use fat that it stores. Extracting chlorogenic acid from green coffee by pouring it with hot water (regardless of it being ground or whole bean coffee) is so ineffective, that there’s no point doing it. You can find pills with extract from green coffee on the market and they might actually have some kind of a positive effect, but let’s make it clear: green coffee doesn’t have any magical properties, that will make you lose weight easily and without any effort. If someone wants to get rid of unwanted kilos, he has to be active and needs to follow a reasonable diet. There aren’t any special pills or other medicines, that will make the problem solve itself… Now, summarizing:
– Can green coffee (or its extract) help me
lose weight? No. You won’t lose your weight, unless you follow a reasonable diet and start some physical exercising. Green coffee can be some kind of an addition, but you might as well drink green tea instead (at least it tastes better) as it also has antioxidiant properties.
– Does green coffee tastes good? No, absolutely not. It tastes like mud.
– But maybe it’s worth to give it a try? No, it’s not worth. Better make yourself an espersso from normal, roasted coffee (e.g. genius arabica, Tarraz from Costa Rica) and go for a long walk. You will feel much better and you will burn some callories.