You Don't Know Joe
Java Joe
These days Lewis is full of facts about coffee and its health benefits. "Coffee is the number one source of antioxidants in the American diet," says Lewis, quoting a 2005 study by Joe Vinson, Ph.D., a chemistry professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania. Not because its antioxidant value is higher than blueberries, say, but because Americans aren't having two cups of blueberries at breakfast and another one that afternoon. "And people think coffee's bad for them," he laughs.
Lewis isn't interested in the beverage, but the berry, in particular the fleshy part of the fruit, which has "wonderful polyphenolic compounds," such as chlorogenic acid, proanthocyanidins, and ferulic acid. In a six-week, double-blind study, he found that these coffee cherry antioxidants improved the appearance of fine lines, wrinkles, and skin tone substantially. The ORAC value (a measure of antioxidants in foods used by the United States Department of Agriculture) of Lewis's coffee-cherry extract is 15,000, a sky-high score compared to prunes (5,770) and kale (1,770), the runners-up. "Until now, there haven't been great anti-aging benefits in all-natural skin-care products," says Lewis. He's so impressed with these findings, and with the success of Revaléskin, which uses the ingredient in the dermatology arena, that he's launching a Priori coffeeberry range in spas. In typical Lewis fashion, he's already given coffeeberry a moniker: He's calling it a "natureceutical."
November 6, 2008
