Ever get a sour stomach after your morning coffee? Well, you might end up switching to a dark roast–because that coffee concoction may leave you with a happier tummy. That’s according to research presented at the American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco. [And to be published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry , http://bit.ly/cberXM ]
Some coffees are labeled “stomach friendly,” because they’re steam treated to drive out caffeine and other chemicals thought to cause gastrointestinal distress. But food chemists [Veronika Somoza et al] wanted to know exactly which chemicals were behind the heartburn. So they took extracts of two coffee blends–one light, one dark–and their steam-treated counterparts. Each extract proved to be a unique chemical mix, with different amounts of caffeine and other compounds.
