Campus Review Vol 30. Issue 06 | Page 9

campusreview.com.au NEWS Rise and grind USQ’s promising link between spent coffee and weight loss. By Wade Zaglas If you’re anything like me, your self‐isolation period has involved many trips to the fridge and not as much exercise as you should have done. Luckily, however, scientists at the University of Southern Queensland have discovered that a spoonful of coffee grounds “could help your waistline go down”. The USQ researchers investigated the properties of used coffee grounds, also known as ‘spent’ coffee, to “uncover its potential as a functional food – a food that can prevent or reverse disease”. Led by Professor Lindsay Brown, a USQ biomedical scientist, the research project involved male rats being fed a high-carb, high-fat diet for four months, supplemented with 5 per cent spent coffee during the last eight weeks of the study. “We found that those on the highcarbohydrate, high-fat diet developed metabolic syndrome, including abdominal obesity, impaired glucose tolerance and cardiovascular and liver damage,” Brown said. “When spent coffee grounds were introduced to their diet, however, we saw that body weight, abdominal fat, total body fat mass, [and] systolic blood pressure was reduced along with improved glucose tolerance and structure and function of the heart and liver. “We also noted changes in gut microbiota that correlated with the reduction in obesity and improvement in glucose tolerance and systolic blood pressure.” Brown said the results showed that a ‘coffee grounds’ intervention may be useful for managing obesity and metabolic syndrome by altering the gut microbiota. “Our study was lucky enough to receive the coffee grounds from the Refectory at USQ’s Toowoomba campus, but if you make your own coffee each morning, then collect the grounds, dry it in the oven at 60 degrees for an hour or two, and simply add a spoonful to your muffin mix or bread mix,” he said. “It’s not something that you’re going to notice an overnight change by doing, however it’s likely to decrease obesity and improve your blood pressure too. Aside from the potential health benefits though, it’s great to have found value in food waste. “Despite there being very little literature on spent coffee, we do know that in Sydney alone more than 3000 tonnes of coffee waste is produced every year, so it’s exciting to think about the impact diverting that waste away from landfill could have while also assisting with healthier lifestyle choices.” According to the university’s functional foods website, more than two-thirds of the Australian population will be classified as overweight or obese in 10 years. Chronic lifestyle conditions such as obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, kidney damage and arthritis are growing at an exponential rate, and there is an urgency to find viable and sustainable solutions. According to Brown, the way the public views the role of food in relation to health and overcoming obesity needs to change. In related research, USQ and other institutes are poised to begin human trials on the Queen Garnet plum in the elderly population. Recent tests have shown that feeding the plum’s juice to overweight rats helped them return to a healthier body weight. Damage to the rats’ livers and hearts was also reversed, “due to the exceptionally high level of anthocyanin – a chemical compound with exceptional anti-inflammatory effect”. ■ 7