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Healthy, Roasted Coffee Beans, Thanks to Science

Dan Perlman, a biophysicist, and K.C Hayes, a nutritionist,  have previously developed the "healthy fats" blend in the Smart Balance buttery spread over twenty years ago; have now invented the parbaked coffee bean.

This new method of roasting green coffee beans is meant to enhance the health benefits of coffee. Perlman developed the flour milled from parbaked beans to act as both a food ingredient and a nutritional supplement. 

Many studies have proven that drinking coffee is good for you and I've written several posts on coffee in the past here, here, here and here :)

Perlman wanted to study a way to roast coffee beans but at the same time not loose its health benefits. When coffee beans are roasted at over 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 to 15 minutes -- the CGA content drops dramatically. One study found the decrease ranged from 50 to nearly 100 percent.
Chlorogenic acid (CGA)is an antioxidant. CGA is thought to be beneficial in controlling sugar metabolism, controlling blood pressure and possibly treating heart disease and cancer.

After several trials at a range of temperatures, Perlman finally found that parbaking the beans at 300 degrees at approximately ten minutes (a shorter time) worked best. The concentration of CGA in the bean, around 10 percent of the bean's weight, barely dropped.

However this parbaked bean cannot be used to brew a cup of coffee since it isnt roasted enough to have flavour. So instead, Perlman cryogenically milled the parbaked beans in an ultra-cold and chemically inert liquid nitrogen atmosphere to protect the bean's beneficial constituents from oxidation. And at the end of the process, the result is a wheat-colored flour which tastes nutty, pleasant and mild. 

This coffee flour is aimed to be blended with regular flours for baking, used in breakfast cereals and snack bars and added to soups, juices and nutritional drinks. 

They also recommend to compensate for CGA lost during regular roasting of coffee beans, people could potentially blend par-baked beans with regularly roasted ones. Perlman also claims that their parbaking technique is also cheaper than the extraction methods used to produce the green coffee bean extract supplements currently on the market.

Brandeis has patented Perlman's coffee bean par-baking and milling method.
The roasting and milling of the beans during Perlman's experimentation process was done with the support of New England Coffee located in Malden, Massachusetts.

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References:

Brandeis University. "Coffee flour offers a potentially healthier way of enjoying java." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 7 January 2016. .

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