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Food

We're One Step Closer to Baked Goods That Will Get You Buzzed

A biophysicist has developed a coffee flour that can be used in baking and blending that he says will allow people to reap the full health perks of the bean.
Photo via Flickr user Marufish

If you want to get drunk or buzzed, you've almost always had to drink it down—not get your buzz on from, say, a sandwich. But for those who have longed for an edible alternative, things could be about to change. Coffee flour is on the way, and its creator says it does the body good.

Today, we're pretty much at peak coffee. Coffee is a time-tested method to get your day going, and as baristas the world-over have brought their own twists to the brewing game, scientists have increasingly been examining the health benefits of drinking coffee. The record is a bit mixed—longstanding thinking said coffee could lead to heartbeat changes, blood pressure, anxiety, and more, but more recent research has suggested that coffee can help lower liver cancer risk, lead to better memory, reduce risk of diseases like Alzheimer's, diabetes, heart failure and Parkinson's and even stave off death.

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But one researcher is suggesting that if we're looking for health benefits, perhaps we've been consuming our coffee beans wrong all along and that we're going to have to ingest all that coffee a different way. Brandeis University biophysicist Dan Perlman has developed a coffee flour that can be used in baking and blending that he says will allow people to reap the full health perks of the bean.

"It is a world of difference," Perlman says.

While the outlook on whether coffee is healthy has shifted toward a positive view over time, researchers aren't sure what exactly is responsible for coffee's health benefits. One theory involves chlorogenic acid (CGA), a naturally occurring chemical that is an antioxidant. CGA, researchers think, helps modulate sugar metabolism, regulate blood pressure and maybe help treat cancer and heart disease.

But when coffee is roasted the normal way, at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 to 15 minutes, the amount of CGA drops, sometimes even disappearing completely. Perlman, who previously devised the "healthy fats" blend in the butter-replacement spread Smart Balance, developed a method of partially baking beans at 300 degrees for ten minutes, preserving the CGA content, which accounts for about 10 percent of a coffee bean's weight.

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With such a relatively low temperature and short baking time, the beans aren't good for drinking—they need to be roasted longer to develop flavor. But Perlman mills the beans into flour, in a cold liquid nitrogen environment to prevent oxidation and CGA loss. The resulting flour is "nutty, pleasant, and mild."

While you can't drink it on its own, Perlman suggests that coffee diehards could brew coffee with both regular coffee grounds and coffee flour to get a dose of CGA in their morning cup. But the real promise may lie in baked goods, with the flour being used for baking, cereals, and snack bars, and in using the flour as a supplement in other types of drinks and soups.

And though it's milled, the flour packs a punch for those craving a buzz: it's about 2.5 percent caffeine by weight, so adding four grams of the stuff to your morning pastry would essentially be the equivalent of drinking a cup of joe.

Brandeis has patented Perlman's baking and milling method. Perhaps, then, we'll see all sorts of all-natural caffeinated baked goods sometime down the line. Now if he could turn his attention to food that gets you drunk, it would be fantastic.