The latest health and wellness trend is adding protein powder to coffee. While it may sound like an odd combination, many people claim that it boosts weight loss and improves workouts. This article examines the science to tell you whether you should add protein powder to your coffee.
What is Protein Coffee?
Protein coffee is exactly what it sounds like - a combination of protein powders (whether soy, whey, or collagen) and coffee. In its simplest form, protein coffee refers to coffee-rich protein powders that are added to cold water to make refreshing smoothies. "Proffee" is a mash-up term for the concoction.
Benefits of Protein Coffee
Studies indicate that adding protein to your coffee may provide several benefits. The allure behind protein coffee lies in the fact that protein powder cancels out the negative effects of drinking coffee. For instance, consuming excess coffee can adversely impact on your body’s ability to absorb iron, which is a vital mineral for making red blood cells and reinforcing the immune system.
Here's a breakdown of the potential advantages:
May Improve Workout Performance
Combining protein powder with coffee may enhance your workouts. Coffee is rich in caffeine, a natural stimulant that can improve your muscle’s contractions and resistance to fatigue when you consume it within 60 minutes before exercising. Likewise, protein powder provides your muscles with the building blocks they need to recover from exercise, grow, and become stronger. Research suggests that people who regularly perform resistance exercise benefit most from ingesting 0.7-1 gram of protein per pound (1.6-2.2 grams per kg) of body weight. Nonetheless, adding protein to coffee remains a convenient way to load up on both caffeine and protein. Protein intake helps you grow more muscles and maintain the bulk. Post-workout shakes, in particular, can also help with muscle recovery. Coffee boosts your workouts by revving up your metabolism, energizing, and alleviating muscle pain. It can also help you focus better on your exercises.
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May Help You Meet Your Daily Protein Needs
One commonly cited benefit to adding protein to coffee is that it helps people who regularly skip breakfast meet their daily protein requirements. Protein is likely best eaten over several periods throughout the day, especially if you’re physically active and hoping to build muscle or increase strength. That’s because your body may only be able to use around 0.2 grams of protein per pound (0.5 grams per kg) of body weight at a time for muscle-building purposes. For someone who weighs 154 pounds (70 kg), this amounts to around 35 grams of protein per meal. Anything above this amount is either used to make energy or excreted through your urine. Thus, adding protein to coffee may help you spread out your protein intake more effectively.
May Help You Lose Weight
Adding protein powder to your coffee may aid weight loss. Given that protein reduces hunger and promotes feelings of fullness, adding it to your coffee may help keep you fuller for longer - and possibly slash the number of calories you eat later in the day. Protein may also provide a slight metabolism boost because it requires your body to burn more calories to break it down than do carbs or fats. Finally, proper protein intake may help you maintain muscle mass while losing body fat. Caffeine has potential weight loss benefits of its own. For instance, research suggests that it boosts your metabolism, lowers levels of hunger hormones, and raises levels of fullness hormones.
Protein makes you feel fuller and demands more energy from the body to digest than carbohydrates or fats. Caffeine can enhance metabolism and reduce the levels of hunger hormones produced by the body.
Prevents Age-Related Muscle Loss
You need muscles to build strength, improve performance, and even shave extra pounds. The higher your muscle mass, the stronger you are and the more calories (and fat) you will burn. You can slow down, prevent, or even reverse muscle mass loss with a combination of protein coffee, healthy diet, and workouts. Taking high-protein supplements coupled with workout sessions has been found to be the perfect combination to stay or get fit. Coffee, on its end, helps boost your workout session so you can build better muscles and maintain them. Make sure to mix your coffee with high-quality protein powders, especially whey protein products which are known to have an abundance of leucine. Leucine is a class of highly specialized, branched-chain amino acids that help with muscle regeneration and production of ATP (the fuel choice for muscles). It also promotes muscle growth and facilitates recovery after heavy workouts.
Increases Mental Alertness and Enhances Cognitive Function
Consuming a blend of coffee with protein powder can not only improve your memory recall and cognitive brain function but also significantly increase your mental alertness. This positive attribute of protein coffee can even help delay the symptoms and early onset of neurodegenerative conditions like dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, and chronic memory lapses. The stimulating properties of caffeine can also keep anxiety and depression at bay by binding with certain brain receptors associated with pain and stress. Whey protein can also increase the production of the feel-good hormone, serotonin. This is the hormone that influences several cognitive functions, including sleep, appetite, libido, memory, digestion, social behavior, and even mood. Coffee can promote mental alertness and even alleviate depression by connecting to adenosine receptors.
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Improves Strength and Stamina During Workouts and Exercise
Drinking protein coffee 30-60 minutes before your workout provides you with a much-needed energy boost. Protein powder provides you with strength, while coffee gives you energy. Caffeine found in coffee helps increase your heart rate and blood pressure for just a couple of hours. This ensures that there’s an adequate supply of nutrients, fuel, and oxygen to the muscles. The ability of caffeine molecules to bind with adenosine receptors in the brain allows the blood vessels to constrict and increase the blood flow. Additionally, the same adenosine receptors prevent the feelings of depression, fatigue, and tiredness, as well as encourage the body to produce more happy-feel and stimulating hormones, such as serotonin and dopamine. By relaxing your central nervous system (CNS), the adenosine receptors help boost your mental strength and alertness. With protein powders helping your muscles grow and caffeine improving your mental energy, you will have enough stamina and strength to power through your workouts and exercise.
Helps with Post-Workout Recovery
Protein powders have anabolic effects, which means that protein intake helps rebuild and repair lost energy.
Potential Downsides of Protein Coffee
Although coffee with protein powder may benefit those who don’t typically eat or drink anything in the morning, it doesn’t likely help those who eat a balanced, protein-rich breakfast alongside regular coffee.
Here are some factors to consider:
Inferior to Whole Foods
Protein powders remain inferior to whole foods because whole sources of protein contain additional vitamins, minerals, and beneficial compounds seldom found in protein powders. Whole foods provide more nutrients.
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Product Quality
The type of protein powder or protein shake you use is important. Try to select products without artificial sweeteners or a swollen ingredient list filled with gums and other additives. (Generally, the smaller the list, the better.) Protein powders are sometimes laden with sugar, fillers, artificial sweeteners, and other additives. They also risk being contaminated with heavy metals, pesticides, and other ingredients not listed on the label. Therefore, it remains best to opt for whole, protein-rich foods over protein powders whenever possible.
Caffeine Content
Caffeine is a drug that stimulates your central nervous system. Too much of it can leave you jittery, anxious, and unable to catch good ZZZs at night. Given that, adding a proffee after a few coffees may be a bit much.
Protein Needs
While protein is important, you can get too much of a good thing. Research links excessive protein consumption to increased risk of cardiovascular disease and kidney disease, among other issues.
How to Make Protein Coffee
Adding protein to your coffee is a simple process as long as you keep a few pointers in mind.
Hot Coffee
Protein powders can clump, especially when added to hot beverages like coffee. To prevent this, try adding only a little protein powder at a time while stirring continuously. You can also use a blender, but to prevent it from cracking, make sure to remove the plastic insert on the lid to allow steam to escape. An immersion blender also works, but it’s best to avoid blenders that don’t allow steam to escape. Alternatively, cool down your coffee with creamer, milk, or ice beforehand.
Iced Coffee
Protein powder is most easily added to cold coffee. For iced coffee, fill a large tumbler halfway with ice, add 2-3 shots of cooled espresso and protein powder, then add a dash of cinnamon before serving. Adding protein powder to iced coffee is also simple. You can also add the powder to a cold drink of coffee to produce a savory protein iced coffee. Dump a scoop of protein powder into iced coffee.
Types of Protein Powder
If you use an animal-based protein powder, whey isolate or concentrate protein powder is recommended. For flavored protein powders, there are many flavors out there, including chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, blueberry, etc. This way, you can pick one that best suits your preference and taste.
Protein Coffee as a Meal Replacement
You can use protein coffee as a meal replacement. It's a quick and easy way to fuel up quickly for a busy morning. However, many powders lack essential vitamins, minerals, or healthy fats. If your goal is to lose weight, a shake that's specifically formulated to replace a meal is a better option.
Dosage
The amount of protein powder you can add to your coffee depends on your weight and activity level.