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Drinking strong coffee before exercising increases fat-burning, new study finds

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228 points curmudgeon22 | 1 comments | 28 Mar 21 17:14 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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PragmaticPulp ◴[28 Mar 21 17:42 UTC] No.26612365[source]▶
> Subjects ingested 3 mg/kg of caffeine or a placebo at 8am and 5pm

3mg/kg is over 250mg of caffeine for an average weight man. Twice a day makes that 500mg.

An 8.4oz can of Red Bull contains 80mg of caffeine. They were giving these people an amount of caffeine equivalent to 6 cans of Red Bull. Not a perfect comparison because Red Bull contains other ingredients, but that's still a lot of caffeine. For another point of reference, that's 2.5 shots of 5 hour energy (200mg caffeine per bottle).

To top it off, the subjects were caffeine-naive, so they had no caffeine tolerance. They must have been feeling extremely energetic.

No wonder they burned more fat. I'm not sure this is going to translate to your casual coffee drinker or someone with a high caffeine tolerance.

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hombre_fatal ◴[28 Mar 21 18:41 UTC] No.26612954[source]▶
Almost seems like you're trying to sensationalize it by changing it to Red Bull, something that's actually pretty low in caffeine once you put marketing aside.

How about comparing it to Starbucks' regular hot coffee sizes?

- Short - 180 mg

- Tall - 260 mg

- Grande - 330 mg

- Venti - 415 mg

Is drinking a 12oz Tall at Starbucks really dropping your jaw?

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PragmaticPulp ◴[28 Mar 21 19:06 UTC] No.26613174[source]▶
> Is drinking a 12oz Tall at Starbucks really dropping your jaw?

Yes, absolutely. But I rarely consume caffeine so my experience is very different than yours.

The study used caffeine-naive individuals. That is, people without any caffeine experience or tolerance.

If you give two tall Starbucks coffees to a caffeine naive person, it will definitely cause some notable effects.

Frequent coffee drinkers tend to underestimate the impact of their caffeine tolerance. A seasoned coffee drinker consuming two of the strongest coffees on the market day after day is a different story than caffeine-naive individuals skipping straight to excessive doses of caffeine without any tolerance.

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1. hombre_fatal ◴[28 Mar 21 21:29 UTC] No.26614807[source]▶
Still, not too many people are drinking 6x Red Bulls at once, the scenario you brought up as an example. Meanwhile swathes of the world are pulling into Starbucks daily, many for their first time.

It's also not two 12oz coffees, it's one at 8am and another at 5pm. It just kinda seems like everything you write here is trying to cause a reaction and it feels manipulative.

You write all this just to reveal your actual point:

> If you give two tall Starbucks coffees to a caffeine naive person, it will definitely cause some notable effects.

Well, sure. We can all agree on that. And one of the notable effects is increased fat oxidation. Notice how uninteresting this observation is by itself. No need to dress it up as something more.