CONSUMPTION OF UNFILTERED COFFEE BREWS IN ELDERLY EUROPEANS

Objective: To quantify the consumption of unfiltered coffee brews, whi ch contain the cholesterol-raising diterpenes cafestol and kahweol, in elderly subjects. Design: Interviews of randomly selected elderly in the 1993 SENECA Study on Nutrition and the Elderly in Europe. Setting: Nine towns in eight European countries (Denmark, France, Italy, the N etherlands, Portugal, Switzerland, Poland, and Northern Ireland/United Kingdom). Subjects: 962 relatively healthy elderly persons (460 men, 502 women) born between 1913 and 1918. Main outcome measure: Daily cof fee consumption, classified by brewing technique. Results: About 90 pe rcent of the examinees were daily coffee users in Roskilde/Dennark (po pulation means; men 530 ml/d, women 425 ml/d) and Culemborg/the Nether lands (men 513 ml/d, women 285 ml/d), against only 12% in Marki/Poland (population means; men 14 ml/ d, women 36 ml/d) and 7% in Coimbra/Por tugal (men 8 ml/d, women 0 ml/d). Drip-filtered and instant coffee, wh ich are poor in diterpenes, were the prevalent types in most survey to wns. Espresso and mocha coffee, which contain intermediate amounts of diterpenes, were consumed daily by 31% of the coffee drinkers in Switz erland and by all coffee drinkers in Italy, but intake was too low to substantially affect serum cholesterol levels. Consumption of brews th at are rich in diterpenes, such as cafetiere, boiled, or Turkish/Greek coffee, was negligible in all survey towns. Conclusions: Coffee drink ing is common among elderly people in some European countries, but int ake of cafestol and kahweol with unfiltered coffee brews is low.