Your Coffee Is Probably Moldy: Time To Switch Over To This Healthier Option

The average American drinks three cups of coffee a day—that's over 1,000 cups a year and 10,000 a decade. Given the sheer volume of coffee we're consuming, it's worth knowing exactly what's in your cup, sip after satisfying sip. Buying your beans from a transparent, health-conscious company can mean the difference between a pure, polyphenol-rich brew and a moldy mess.

Before coffee makes its way to your cup, there are a few opportunities for mold to cling to it. If the conditions are warm and damp enough, mold can form directly on the coffee bean crop or emerge during storage and transportation. Most mycotoxins are chemically stable and survive food processing1, which is why proper handling of coffee is key. If left unchecked, mold and fungi can form mycotoxins—toxic chemical products that are invisible to the naked eye.

The most common mycotoxin found in coffee is ochratoxin A2 (OA). A sampling of 60 coffees from Brazil found ochratoxin A in 20 of them3 (33.3%), while other studies4 have identified the mycotoxin in nearly half of the beans analyzed.

Seeing as it's so common, ochratoxin A is considered5 "one of the most important mycotoxins of worldwide concern for human health." As the World Health Organization1 explains, "Large doses of aflatoxins can lead to acute poisoning (aflatoxicosis) and can be life-threatening, usually through damage to the liver." Research has also linked high amounts of ochratoxin A exposure to chronic kidney disease6. It also seems to negatively affect immune health in some animals, though more research on humans is needed.

Before you chuck out all the beans in your house and switch over to tea, know that the amount of ochratoxin A typically found in coffee is unlikely to be enough to carry any meaningful health risk. Even if you drink upward of six cups a day, it should still fall below the EU Committee for Food's safety limit of 3 mg/kg of OA from coffee a day. The roasting process can further reduce the amount of ochratoxin A7 in contaminated beans.

The USDA-certified organic whole-bean blend contains coffee from three global regions including Africa, Central America, and South America. All of our beans are shade-grown in mountainous terrain with rich, biodiverse soil. This helps the beans develop a more complex flavor than those grown on conventional large-scale farms that are largely void of life. This more sustainable, regenerative approach to growing also lends a more nutrient-dense product (read: plenty of polyphenols).

Our four types of beans are hand-picked at peak ripeness and then carefully hand-sorted before being roasted and blended into what you see in a bag. We know from laboratory testing that the finished product is rich in certain native polyphenols. The plant compounds in our product have been shown to have inflammatory-balancing actions8 and antioxidant effects9 in preclinical trials. These add to the already impressive health perks of coffee. When consumed responsibly, research on caffeinated coffee shows that it can offer protection against cardiovascular issues10, Type 2 diabetes11, and late-life dementia, and it's been associated with a lower risk of death overall.