Coffee+Beans!

=__Coffee Beans!__=

In this experiment, we were testing our blood sugar levels and how regular and chocolate covered coffee beans effect our blood sugar. We had 4 test subjects and no control group. All 4 subjects ate Cheerios for breakfast and decaf iced tea for lunch to assure that everyones blood sugar wasn't effected by different things that we ate through out the day, and so our data would be constant.Then we took our blood sugar levels to have something to compare to the blood sugar levels after eating the coffee beans to. 2 people ate 15 regular coffee beans, and two other people ate 15 chocolate covered coffee beans. Around 40 minutes later we tested our blood sugar again. There was no significant changes in our blood sugar. (Significant changes were decided to be a 15% change or more.) So, coffee beans show no significant changes. Although they did still show some changes.
 * Abstract:**

About one ounce of dark chocolate contains 16.77 mg of caffeine, while one ounce of Starbucks Pike Place coffee contains 20.62 mg of caffeine. 15 plain coffee beans contain no sugar, but 15 dark chocolate covered coffee beans contain about 24.70 grams of sugar. Caffeine is tested to not necessarily affect blood sugar, but it does impair insulin action which can increase blood sugar levels. Regular chocolate is proven to increase blood sugar levels, but because dark chocolate contains more than half the amount of carbohydrates found in regular chocolate. Carbohydrates were found to dramatically increase blood sugar levels. In a previous study done by San Diego State University they proved that consuming dark chocolate can lower blood sugar levels. Another study published in the “Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry” showed that caffeine can stop ones blood pressure from elevating. We wanted to do this experiment to test how consuming caffeine plus chocolate would result in correlation with consuming just caffeine.
 * Introduction:**
 * Method:** The study groups are two people eating a certain kind of coffee beans, and two people eating the same kind of coffee beans with chocolate on them. The conditions are eating a bowl of Cherrios for breakfast with a glass of milk, and skip lunch but drink a bottle of decaf iced tea. The control group will eat only coffee beans, so we can understand the difference between eating regular coffee beans and eating chocolate-covered coffee beans. The experimental group will eat chocolate-covered coffee beans. We will collect data by having everyone prick their fingers before eating the coffee beans, and than an hour later, after eating 10 coffee beans, everyone will prick their finger again and we will see how eating chocolate-covered coffee beans affects the blood sugar compared to eating regular coffee beans.


 * Results:**
 * Control 3 || Control 4 || Control 1 || Control 2 ||
 * before caffeine: 97

after 15 chocolate covered coffee beans: 110 || before caffeine: 94

after 15 regular coffee beans: 91 || before caffeine: 79

After 15 regular coffee beans: 87 || before caffeine: 104

after 15 chocolate covered coffee beans: 91 || Control 1, 2, 3, and 4 got their blood sugar tested. After getting their blood sugar tested, control 3 & 2 consumed fifteen chocolate covered coffee beans and control 1 & 4 consumed fifteen regular roasted coffee beans. Waited for about twenty-five minutes to get their blood sugar tested again to see if it had changed in any way after consuming the coffee. Control 3 & 1 both did different things and their blood sugar went up, Control 2 & 4 both also did different things and their sugar went down.

Control 3: 13.4% Control 4: 3.2% Control 1: 10.1% Control 2: 12.5%

So basically nothing changed dramatically, but if they would've waited for a longer period of time it might have had some change.


 * Discussion:**

This study showed that control group 1 and control group 4 consumed the regular roasted coffee beans which had different effects on each of them which were not expected. What was expected was that the regular coffee beans would have the same affect on control 1 and control 4 but after control 1 consumed the coffee beans his blood sugar slightly increased and when control 4 consumed the coffee beans her blood sugar slightly decreased. Same unexpected results from control 2 and control 3 who consumed dark chocolate covered roasted coffee beans. Control 2’s blood sugar slightly decreased and control 3’s blood sugar slightly increased when we expected both of these subjects blood sugar levels to rise. Maybe this happened because the different levels of blood sugar all the controls started out with. control 1 had a lower blood sugar than control 4 and control 3 had a lower blood sugar than control 2 and maybe each control’s insulin just reacted differently. All this shows that more testing should be done on subjects with more similar eating habits and similar blood sugar levels to get better results in the future.
 * References:**

Mayo Clinic Staff. "Caffeine content for coffee, tea, soda, and more." Mayo clinic.

Kimberly Wilson. "Does Dark Chocolate Contain Caffeine?" Livestrong. Jun 14, 2011.

"Dark Chocolate Lowers 'Bad' Cholesterol And Blood Sugar Levels When Eaten In Moderation: Study." Huffpost Healthy Living. April 30, 2012.

Aglaee Jacobs. "Does Chocolate Raise your blood sugar?" Livestrong. Jan 28, 2011.

Maura Shenker. "The Effect of Simple Carbohydrates & Fat on Blood Sugar." Livestrong. May 6, 2011.