Another Reason Why Coffee’s the Real McCoy
By Kevin Kolodziejski
While it may be the same enticing color as Gatorade’s Cool Blue, Powerade’s Mountain Blast, or BodyArmor’s Blueberry Raspberry, could you ever imagine filling up your water bottles with windshield wiper fluid?
It seems like a foolish question to ask, but not because windshield wiper fluid contains no carbohydrates and that on a more-than-two-hour ride you could seriously bonk by drinking only that. But because it’s at least 30 percent methanol and, regardless of the amount of time you ride, you could really die by drinking some of that.
And if you don’t die, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll go blind. Which means there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be selling whatever bike you’re riding currently to have the currency to buy a tandem.
All bad joking aside, here’s why asking if you’d ever hydrate with what’s in essence poisonous glass cleaner only seems like a foolish question.
Why It Only Seems Like a Foolish Question
Just about all the illegal alcohol seized by the Feds during Prohibition — the Mob Museum website estimates 98 percent of it — contained methanol, aka wood alcohol, meaning over that 13-year period hundreds of thousands of Americans willingly consumed something akin to windshield wiper fluid. As a result, journalist Edward Samuel Behr estimates 10,000 died from wood alcohol poisoning before Prohibition was repealed. According to Garden&Gun, at least that many went blind.
So what about the remaining 2 percent of the confiscated booze?
It wasn’t brewed in America but smuggled into America, much of it by one single sea captain who brought in legitimate Irish and Canadian whisky, rye, and wine. The sea captain saw himself as an “honest lawbreaker,” as Rebecca Schlam Lutto writes in a 1983 New York Times article; therefore, he sold his contraband uncut, and there was no chance of going blind or dying if you drank his stuff. That sea captain’s name has been withheld intentionally up to this point to heighten narrative suspense. But there won’t be much of that if you remember today’s title.
For Bill McCoy’s decision to sell his bootlegged booze unadulterated is just another reason why we call genuine and authentic things “the real McCoy.” And when it comes to things to do to help your health, drinking coffee is exactly that. But if you’re familiar with some of the thousands of studies already done on the brew that precedes so many bicycle rides —and often keeps the long ones going — you already suspected that.
A Quick Summary of Prior Coffee Studies
In short, past studies have found an association between the daily and moderate consumption of coffee and a lower risk of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, chronic kidney disease, liver disease, liver cancer, gallstones, and kidney stones, as well as improved mood and a lower risk of depression. That’s reason enough for all cyclists — and even our misguided non-pedaling brethren — to drink two or three cups a day, unless, that is, they are especially caffeine sensitive.
More recently, research led by Stephen Safe, PhD, at Texas A&M University and published in the March 2026 issue of Nutrients provides one explanation (one of the many probably) why that all occurs.
The Backstory and Big Story of the New Coffee Study
Safe’s research focused on something that at first glance might strike you as the license plate of a Tour de France team car, NR4A1. And while somewhere in Europe it very well may be, in the laboratory it’s the name of a protein receptor in your body that fights oxidative damage and inflammatory stress. In prior studies using mice, Safe and colleagues discovered that production of NR4A1 decreases with age and that it protects against tissue damage and cell injury.
Equally important to that research was a related finding. That certain compounds bind to NR4A1 and make it function better. Polyphenols are natural compounds found in plant foods that your body uses to neutralize the free radicals that create inflammation and oxidative damage and have such binding properties, so that led Safe to next investigate whether the ones found in coffee bind to NR4A1 and make it more effective.
So he recruited colleagues, purchased the same type of human cells used in cancer research, obtained coffee samples from A & M’s department of coffee research and education, and then experimented and experimented. Safe’s study concluded that the polyphenols found in coffee, such as ferulic and caffeic acid, as well as two organic compounds, cafestrol and kahweol, do indeed bind to NR4A1, which suggests that those aforementioned health benefits derived from coffee consumption are due “in part” as a result of the substances found in coffee.
A Second New Coffee Study
If you need any more substance that coffee is indeed a real health McCoy, consider the study published in the July 2026 issue of the European Journal of Nutrition. It found that habitual coffee drinkers have a leaner body composition than those who don’t, as well as fewer circulating branch-chained amino acids in their blood. The last finding is especially significant since high levels of circulating BCAAs have been determined to increase the odds of having obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.
Researchers at the University of Oulu in Finland came to this conclusion by analyzing health data collected on the more than 3,200 participants in a follow-up study of the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966. As part of the follow-up and the initial study, researchers calculated the participants’ body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, and body fat percentage and questioned the participants about their coffee consumption. From this, the researchers found that those who drank the highest amounts of coffee had less fat and more muscle compared to those who didn’t drink coffee at all.
Moreover, a higher coffee intake in men was linked to higher amounts of testosterone and sex hormone-binding globulin, SHBG, which has been linked to a lower risk of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and prostate cancer.
Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.
A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.
