More fibre in coffee than orange juice?

By Stephen Daniells

22/02/2007 - Coffee, a well-established source of antioxidants, may also be a richer source of soluble dietary fibre than orange juice, researchers in Spain have reported.

"The dietary fibre content in brewed coffee is higher than in other common beverages such as wine (0.14 per cent) or orange juice (0.19 per cent)," stated the researchers.

Coffee, one of the world's largest traded commodities produced in more than 60 countries and generating more than $70bn in retail sales a year, continues to spawn research and interest, and has been linked to improved cognitive performance and reduced risks of certain diseases, especially of the liver and diabetes.

Writing in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, authors Elena Díaz-Rubio and Fulgencio Saura-Calixto from the Department of Metabolism and Nutrition at Madrid's Instituto del Frío, state that, while it is known that coffee beans contain dietary fibre, no study had ever investigated the presence of dietary fibre in coffee beverages. Indeed, food composition tables list coffee as containing zero dietary fibre.

In the new study, the researchers used a special technique for measuring dietary fibre in beverages such as wine and beer, and reports that brewed coffee contains between 0.47 and 0.75 grams of soluble dietary fibre (SDF) per 100 millilitres of beverage, which would equate to between 2.54 and 20 per cent of the powdered coffee bean.

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