VANCOUVER, Canada — Researchers from the University of British Columbia, Faculty of Land and Food Systems have discovered that Coffee Leaf Tea, a beverage made from infusing processed coffee leaves, has the potential to mitigate biochemical mediators that influence blood pressure and inflammation.
Coffee Leaf Tea extracts derived from coffee leaves processed similarly to tea, were found to have an effect on nitric oxide production and anti-inflammatory agents. The bioactivities of coffee leaf were mainly attributed to a complex mixture of phytochemicals unique to the coffee leaf.
“Our research showed that using processing methods commonly used for tea, for coffee leaves, produced unique antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities that we associated with known mixtures of phytochemicals specific to the coffee leaf. Both immune-stimulation and immune-suppression capacities observed were affected by the tea processing method used for the coffee leaf beverage.” – Dr. David Kitts, Assc. Dean UBC Food Sciences
Coffee Leaf Tea doesn’t get bitter like regular tea, so most people just leave it in their cup as they enjoy it. The good news for them is that the study also found significantly higher anti-inflammatory activity with longer steep times.
“Ethiopians have known about the remarkable health benefits of Coffee Leaf Tea for over a thousand years. It’s only now that we can start to uncover all the benefits thanks to our partnership with UBC.” – Max Rivest, Co-Founder/CEO of Wize Monkey
Dr. David Kitts is well-known in the food chemistry academia for releasing many published studies on antioxidants and natural nutrition sources. Recently, his laboratory has focused on characterizing the mechanisms of antioxidant and prooxidant activity for many naturally occurring animal and plant constituents, in addition to derived products from food processing.
