Is decaf really healthier than regular coffee? Here’s how they compare.
Coffee beans are full of antioxidants that benefit that heart and brain, but the decaffeination process can alter these helpful compounds.
Coffee may be one of the world’s most popular beverages but people are increasingly turning to decaf out of concern for their health. Surveys show that 26 million Americans report drinking decaf coffee on a regular basis, whether it’s due to concerns over high blood pressure, a desire to limit caffeine later in the day, to avoid sleep disruptions, or due to caffeine sensitivities.
Whatever a person’s reasons for switching may be, “decaf is becoming more and more popular,” says Lauren Ball, a professor of community health and well-being at the University of Queensland, in Brisbane, Australia.
But regular coffee has health benefits in its own right—including a reduced risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, a reduced risk of developing neurological conditions, such as dementia, and a reduced risk of death. Meanwhile, there are rising health concerns about one particular method of removing caffeine from coffee beans, as it uses a harmful chemical called methylene chloride.
(Read more about the debate over methylene chloride here.)
So what are the health benefits of decaffeinated coffee—and how do these health benefits compare to regular, caffeinated coffee?
How decaf compares to regular coffee
The good news is that many of coffee’s health benefits are still found in decaffeinated coffee, says Luis Rustveld, a registered dietitian and assistant professor of family and community medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston, Texas. As Rustveld notes, coffee contains a number of beneficial compounds, many of which remain even after removing the caffeine.
The reason for this is thought to be due to the levels of antioxidants in coffee beans, many of which remain even after the caffeine has been removed.
“There are different ways the caffeine is removed, but overall, looking at the chemical compounds in the coffee beans itself, it seems that there are still some protective benefits,” says Dolores Wood, a registered dietitian at The University of Texas Health Science Center School of Public Health, in Houston, Texas.
Depending on how the caffeine is removed from the coffee beans, this can reduce the amounts of antioxidants compared to regular coffee, but overall, the levels are still high, with coffee representing a significant source of dietary antioxidants for many people.
(Four common methods for making decaf—and how their health benefits compare.)
That can translate to real benefits for decaf drinkers. In a 2014 meta-analysis of 28 different studies, researchers found that both decaf and regular coffee drinkers had a reduced risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. The more coffee a person reported drinking in a day, the lower their risk for developing the disease.
The pros and cons of caffeine
However, there are some subtle differences in the benefits of decaf and regular coffee. But it’s difficult to parse out whether the effects found in these studies are due to the lack of caffeine in decaf; the changes made to coffee as a result of removing the caffeine; or the lower numbers of decaf drinkers.
In a 2022 study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, researchers tracked the health outcomes of 449,563 participants over 12.5 years, looking at the rate of cardiovascular disease in coffee drinkers versus non-coffee drinkers. They found a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and death in all coffee drinkers, which included people who drank decaf.
The one major difference researchers found was that decaffeinated coffee was not associated with a reduction in arrythmias. This may be due to caffeine having a stabilizing effect on the heart’s rhythm, by blocking adenosine receptors, says Peter Kistler, a cardiologist at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute at The Alfred, a hospital in Melbourne, Australia.
As a result, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology issued a recommendation that physicians should stop telling patients to stop drinking coffee—which they had long done due to concerns that it was linked to atrial fibrillation.
Caffeine can also help alleviate migraines, with research showing that for people who experience episodic migraines, regular caffeine consumption can decrease the frequency of their migraines. Research also suggests that caffeine can help augment the effects of migraine medication, making it more effective. For other people, caffeine can trigger headaches, or make them worse.
(You can consume too much caffeine. Here are the risks.)
But that doesn’t mean more caffeine is the answer, says Ina Bergheim, a nutritional researcher at the University of Vienna. “If caffeine were the only reason why coffee was beneficial, we would probably see similar effects from soft drinks,” Bergheim says.
The current FDA recommendation is to not exceed 400 milligrams per day, with one eight-ounce cup of coffee containing between 80 to 100 milligrams. The effects of caffeine can vary, with some people being much more sensitive. In the short-term, consuming too much caffeine can cause jitteriness, sleep disruptions, gastrointestinal discomfort, headaches, or a racing heart. Long-term, consuming too much caffeine can lead to withdrawal symptoms, such as headaches, if a person tries to stop.
Context matters
One of the reasons that the health benefits of coffee have been debated for so long is due to the fact that its consumption can often go hand-in-hand with other habits, some of which can make parsing out the true cause and effect very difficult. “There are no perfect studies on this,” Bergheim says. Instead, researchers have had to parse out the cause and effect of coffee consumption by tracking the habits and health outcomes of a lot of people, which introduces a risk of conflating factors that are correlated, but not causative.
For example, in a major study that tracked the coffee consumption habits of over 200,000 health workers, researchers found coffee drinking was associated with a higher rate of smoking cigarettes—and that the health risks they faced such as lung cancer were due to smoking rather than coffee.
The same can be true of other habits that go hand-in-hand with drinking coffee, such as adding in a lot of sugar. As another study found, regular coffee consumption is associated with a reduced amount of weight gain over time, but only if drinkers had their coffee black or with cream, but no sugar. This held true whether people were drinking regular or decaf coffee. “Having unsweetened coffee seems to be the way to go, whether or not it’s decaf or regular,” Ball says.
