Higher Coffee Intake Linked to Lower Visceral Fat and Greater Muscle Mass
Key Takeaways:
- Higher habitual coffee intake was associated with lower total and visceral fat and greater skeletal muscle mass, despite a similar BMI.
- Coffee intake was linked to lower branched-chain amino acids in both sexes, and to sex-specific differences in testosterone and SHBG.
- The study was observational, so it cannot show that drinking coffee caused any of the differences identified.
A familiar drink with poorly understood biology
Coffee is consumed around the world every day, and earlier research has associated coffee drinking with a reduced risk of conditions including type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. What has remained unclear is why. Scientists still do not fully understand the biological processes that might explain those connections, which has made it difficult to interpret the epidemiological signal.
New research from Finland now suggests that regular coffee consumption is associated with healthier body composition, favourable metabolic markers, and distinct patterns involving sex hormones in men and women.
What the researchers examined
Researchers at the University of Oulu analysed information from 2,264 people who were 46 years old and taking part in the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966. The team investigated how participants’ usual coffee intake related to circulating metabolites, indicators of cardiometabolic risk, and sex hormone levels.
Studying a single birth cohort at a single age has a particular advantage: it removes age itself as a source of variation, allowing differences between people with higher and lower coffee intake to stand out more clearly.
Lower body fat and greater muscle mass
People who consumed more coffee tended to have lower levels of both total body fat and visceral fat, along with greater skeletal muscle mass.
Notably, these differences appeared even though participants with higher and lower coffee intake had a similar body mass index (BMI). That detail matters clinically. BMI cannot distinguish fat mass from lean mass, or subcutaneous fat from the visceral fat that sits around the abdominal organs and carries the stronger association with cardiometabolic risk. Two people with an identical BMI may therefore have meaningfully different metabolic profiles, and in this cohort coffee intake tracked with that hidden difference rather than with weight itself.
A metabolic marker associated with diabetes risk
Higher coffee consumption was also associated with lower circulating concentrations of branched-chain amino acids in both men and women. When chronically elevated, these biomarkers have previously been associated with insulin resistance and a greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
This finding sits alongside the body composition results rather than separately from them, since visceral fat and insulin resistance are themselves closely linked.
Different hormonal patterns in men and women
Some of the clearest differences appeared among men. Greater coffee consumption was associated with a more favourable glucose-insulin profile, higher levels of total and bioavailable testosterone, and greater concentrations of sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG). However, free testosterone and the free androgen index were modestly lower.
The hormonal associations were less extensive in women. Higher coffee consumption was mainly associated with increased SHBG and lower measures of free androgens.
The common thread across both groups was SHBG, the carrier protein that binds circulating sex hormones and influences how much is biologically available to tissues. Higher SHBG has itself been studied in relation to metabolic health, which makes it a plausible point of connection between the hormonal and cardiometabolic findings.
“Coffee is consumed by millions of people every day, yet we still know surprisingly little about how it relates to our metabolism and hormones. What stood out in our findings was a distinct hormonal signature that didn’t disappear even after we took into account BMI and lifestyle factors, with several of these associations differing between men and women,” says Luca Verroest, lead author of the study and Doctoral Researcher at the University of Oulu.
Why the hormonal findings could matter
The findings raise the possibility that hormonal pathways could help explain some of the previously observed relationship between coffee consumption and metabolic health.
Because the research was observational, however, it cannot establish that drinking coffee directly caused any of the biological differences identified in the study. People who drink more coffee may differ from those who drink less in ways the analysis could not fully capture, and the direction of any relationship cannot be determined from data collected at a single point in time.
For clinicians, the more immediately useful message concerns interpretation rather than advice. Findings of this kind reinforce how much a single anthropometric measure can conceal, and how dietary patterns, body composition, and endocrine markers interact when assessing cardiometabolic risk. Practitioners who want to strengthen that interpretive skill set often look to structured CPD such as the College of Contemporary Health’s Nutrition & Weight Management Essentials short course, which examines how dietary intake relates to body composition and metabolic health in everyday practice.
Finland as a study setting
The setting also makes the research especially relevant. Finland ranks among the world’s highest coffee-consuming countries, with average annual consumption of approximately 11.8 kilograms (26 pounds) per person. A population with high and widely varying intake offers greater statistical range than one in which most people drink little coffee at all.
What happens next
Researchers say the results offer a starting point for studies designed to determine whether coffee itself produces these biological changes and, if so, which compounds may be responsible. Scientists are currently investigating these questions using animal models, with the longer-term aim of moving towards human intervention studies.
Additional research will be necessary before the findings can be used to shape dietary recommendations. For now, the study contributes a mechanistic hypothesis rather than a change in practice.
The study, “Associations of habitual coffee intake with testosterone and cardiometabolic markers: the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 study,” was published in the European Journal of Nutrition.
CCH insight
Body composition, dietary patterns, and metabolic markers rarely tell a complete story in isolation, and BMI alone can mask clinically important differences. The College of Contemporary Health’s Nutrition & Weight Management Essentials short course helps healthcare professionals interpret these measures together and apply nutritional evidence confidently in patient-facing practice.
Explore Nutrition & Weight Management Essentials →
Source: University of Oulu, Finland
