13.mar.07
Scientific America
Coco Ballantyne
A new study was cited as showing that brewed coffee contains fiber, but don't give up the whole grains, fruit and veggies yet—or, for that matter, ever.
Scientists already knew that coffee beans were rich in dietary fiber—and now Fulgencio Saura-Calixto and Elena Díaz-Rubio, food scientists at the National Research Council in Madrid, have confirmed for the first time that brewed coffee also contains it.
Using a method similar to that used to measure fiber in beer and wine, they treated each type of coffee with enzymes to break apart constituent molecules, then filtered out the water and analyzed the remaining solid compounds. Their findings, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry: all three types of coffee contained between 0.47 and 0.75 grams of fiber per 100 milliliters. Freeze-dried coffee came out on top, most likely, Saura-Calixto says, because its high-temperature preparation process ensures that large amounts of soluble fiber are extracted from the beans.