Drink a coffee to fight off snack cravings

DIETERS struggling to resist cravings for crisps and chocolate should drink a cup of coffee instead, research suggests.

Just as illegal cannabis is known to give users the ‘munchies’ – where they are irresistibly drawn to snacks – coffee can have the reverse effect, scientists found. The findings, by Northwestern University in the US, support previous evidence that those drinking two cups of daily coffee after a diet are better able to keep weight off. The study, published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, measured hundreds of biological signs in the blood of 47 coffee drinkers.

It found compounds produced by the body’s endocannabinoid system – also responsible for the ‘high’ people get from smoking cannabis – fell the more coffee people drank.

This suggests that not only can coffee speed up the metabolism, helping us burn fat quicker, it also makes us less hungry.