#136 The Coffee Episode with Alex Manos and Alex Higham from Exhale Coffee

9th Feb 2022

I LOVE coffee. I love the ritual of my morning cup, I love the smell, the rich aromas, the flavour. I got into the coffee scene during my time in Australia and my obsession has continued.

Roasted coffee is a complex mixture of thousands of bioactive compounds, and some of them are recognised to have health-promoting properties. Things like the polyphenols, the products of roasting the beans and even the caffeine itself. A lot of people ascribe these benefits to the antioxidant profile of the chemicals they contain which have also been shown in lab, animal and human studies to be anti-inflammatory. But, the mechanisms that support its potential impact on reducing the risk of a number of conditions may be a lot more complicated.

It’s fairly well recognised that habitual coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of diseases, like type 2 diabetes, dementia, chronic liver disease and even certain types of cancer., but there are a number of coffee paradoxes. For example, it is well known to raise blood pressure in the short term, but it’s associated with lower rates of cardiovascular disease?

I’ve got Alex Manos and Al Higham from Exhale Coffee to talk about everything you’ve wanted to know about coffee. Exhale Coffee launched in lockdown 2020 and is the first coffee in the UK to be sourced and roasted for your health as well as your performance. It’s organic and speciality grade but uniquely, through 9 different independent lab tests, is high in healthy plant phytochemicals, or polyphenols, and some vitamins.

We talk about sourcing beans, the effect of stressed crops and how that develops the flavour as well as the health benefits (xenohormesis), the process of extracting the bean, how you roast it for a better taste and health profile. The different brew methods and why that would impact the amount of bioactives in your cup, the process of decaffeination and if you can preserve the health benefits, and we do a nerdy dive into the mechanisms of why coffee may have health benefits.