The Real Reason Drip Coffee Is The Healthiest Brewing Method

Owners of a Mr. Coffee coffee pot, rejoice. It turns out that filtered coffee (or drip coffee, or brewed coffee — whatever you want to call it) is the best way to drink java when it comes to heart health. A recent Swedish university research study found that "unfiltered brew was associated with higher mortality than filtered brew, and filtered brew was associated with lower mortality than no coffee consumption" (via Fox). 

This conclusion suggests that not only is drinking filtered coffee not bad for your health, it actually might be beneficial for your heart. According to the study, consumption of this type of coffee can contribute to a 12 percent decrease in the risk of death from cardiovascular disease for men and a 20 percent decrease in women. Of course, there are many other variables at play when it comes to carrying out studies to determine if coffee is good for you, but there seems to be a recent trend of studies pointing out the health benefits of a cup of morning joe (via Healthline).

The findings were published in the European Journal of Preventative Cardiology (via Sage Journals). Though we often forget that caffeine is technically a drug, as the study points out, coffee is the most frequently-used central stimulant in the world, but there's still not a lot of research when it comes to whether the consumption contributes to an increase in the risk of ischemic heart disease, a condition in which the heart doesn't get enough blood due to narrowed arteries. 

The study focused solely on a group of 635,718 Norwegian participants between the ages of 20 and 79. It was fitting that Norwegians were the guinea pigs for this study because as the study points out, in Norway, coffee is most traditionally brewed using a paper filter. The data was collected over quite a long period of time, from 1985 to 2003. Other variables such as the number of cigarettes smoked per day, amount of daily exercise, and level of education was also taken into account.