Traditionally, coffee is brewed with coffee beans, and the coffee grounds and coffee silverskin by-products are discarded as useless… at least, in terms of drinking coffee.
BTW, coffee silverskin is the skin of the coffee bean that’s removed during processing after the beans have been dried.

Now if you’re like most people, you probably don’t think twice about throwing away your coffee grounds… can’t blame you, I was the same way until I read something really interesting.  Recent findings have found that coffee by-products such as coffee grounds and coffee silverskin are much more beneficial than initially thought.

Are You Wasting Health Benefits By Throwing Away Coffee Grounds?

A research team at UGR started researching the health benefits of coffee grounds to determine if the by-products could be useful for nutritional reasons.  And what they found was that coffee-byproducts (grounds and silverskin) possess powerful antimicrobial and antioxidant properties.  They discovered that both coffee grounds and coffee silverskin are very rich in phenols which are potent antioxidants.

Antioxidants are very important to help you maintain good health, by neutralizing the free radical activity within your body.  Free radicals are rogue unstable molecules that can damage the cells in your body if left unchecked.  Too many free radicals can lead to serious chronic health problem like heart disease, and it’s also one of the leading causes of accelerated aging.

Like many things in life, when it comes to achieving optimal health it’s best to be proactive rather than reactive.  So increasing your daily antioxidant consumption in order to reduce free radical activity is one of the best ways to prevent chronic illness as well as slowing the aging process.

Now there are many anti-oxidant rich foods that you can (and should) be eating everyday.  BUT here’s something you probably didn’t know… the Journal of Food Science and Technology found that coffee grounds were found to be more than 500 times greater than the antioxidant effects of vitamin C!  Additionally, it was found that coffee by-products also possess potent antimicrobial and prebiotic effects.

Antimicrobial is an agent that kills microorganisms or prevents their growth.  Which means has anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-viral and anti-parasitic effects in your body.
Prebiotics are non-digestible fiber compounds that go through the upper GI undigested until it reaches your lower GI (Large Bowel) at which point stimulates the activity of good bacteria in your large bowel to help optimize your digestive system.

And let’s not forget that these potential health benefits of coffee by-products can positively impact the environment as well.  By collecting the coffee by-products, which otherwise would have just been thrown away, it would dramatically decrease the amount being discarded into landfills.

How The Heck Do You Consume Coffee By-Products?

And here lies our problem… even though researchers have discovered this powerful source of antioxidants, more work needs to be done in order to determine the best way to harness these health benefits for the public.  Some of the researchers have suggested recycling the coffee grounds to create new ingredients, and make it easier for you and I to consume and take advantage of their benefits.

Although there isn’t any commercially available coffee ground supplement yet.  There are other ways to get coffee grounds into your diet.
For instance, one tasty and useful way is to use them as meat seasoning.  Surprisingly, coffee grounds help tenderize the meat and they form a crust on the outer layer of the meat which helps seals in moisture.

Ingredients for coffee-ground rub:

• 3 tablespoons coffee grounds (make sure coffee grounds are dry)

• 1 tablespoon black pepper

• 1 tablespoon paprika

• 1 tablespoon coconut sugar (low index sweetener)

• 1 tablespoon of sea salt

• Rub liberally onto steak or any meat of your choice and enjoy!

So before you discard your coffee grounds next time, keep it and try making rub out of it.  The potential health benefit may well be worth keeping the coffee grounds 😊