What does all this stuff mean for real world coffee fans?
Moderate your carb intake when drinking coffee. Some fruit and maybe even a bit of sweet potato hash can be okay, especially if you’re glucose tolerant, but for the most part, stick to eggs and bacon with your coffee in the morning. And whatever you do, don’t be one of those pudgy carb-loading cyclists clad in spandex I see at the cafe quaffing coffee and pounding kruellers. That’s not a good combo.
Get up and move around a bit when you drink. Since that coffee has just liberated a bunch of fatty acids from your adipose tissue, use them! Go for a walk, take a stroll around the office, do some gardening, hit the trails, ride your bike, play with your kids. Just move. If you don’t, the bulk of those fatty acids will simply be recycled back into your body fat.
Remember that coffee isn’t just caffeine. It is a whole plant food/drink with hundreds of bioactive compounds beyond just caffeine, like chlorogenic acid, which may have protective effects against type 2 diabetes. Those compounds come from and are affected by the environment, soil, elevation, climate, and region in and at which the coffee was grown. Even the roasting temperature changes the antioxidant content and composition of the beans. The taste and health effects of coffee thusly depend on dozens of factors, and that’s why coffee has different effects on different people as reflected across dozens of studies. Coffee isn’t coffee isn’t coffee. The coffee that tanked those people’s insulin sensitivity in that study may have been a mass market blend from Starbucks, while the single origin coffee from a little Guatemalan plantation could have totally different effects (or it could be the other way around).