Want coffee -- with benefits? Here's what you'll get

by Janet Cromley
Los Angeles Times

We’re a nation of spoiled coffee drinkers. Whereas our forebears boiled old grounds over camp stoves and our parents percolated Folgers, we’re driving five miles to suck down triple mocha lattes like beer at a NASCAR event.

Now it’s gotten even headier: Coffee with benefits. Cashing in on our insatiable thirst for coffee and our willingness to embark on new frontiers, java makers are adding a dazzling array of extras to coffee, including soy protein, guarana, garcinia cambogia, matcha green tea, white willow, yerba mate and echinacea.

The ingredients are intended to have actual benefits, such as boosting metabolism or energy, improving the immune system or increasing mental focus.

We put four infused, pre-ground coffees to a taste test and were surprised at how much they tasted like regular pre-ground coffee.

That was the good news.

The bad news is that ingredients such as guarana and yerba mate, which contain caffeine, can leave you with enough supplemental energy to take down a tiger in the jungle. We suggest that before snapping up a bag of infused coffee, consider what you want the coffee to do and then do some research on the supplemental ingredients.

Here’s what we found: More >>