Does coffee cause acne? Well, coffee may make existing acne worse, but you can tweak your coffee intake routine a little bit to prevent this risk.
Acne and coffee have been linked by many people for a long time. Some people swear that coffee indeed can cause acne, while others say otherwise.
The simplest explanation about that is that coffee doesn’t cause acne. But, a regular consumption of coffee can make it worse.
Also Read
There are also several factors that can determine if the coffee you consume is going to worsen acne, from what you’re putting in your coffee, how much you drink your coffee and several other factors.
So, let’s get into the explanation down below!
Table of Contents
Does Coffee Cause Acne?

Coffee doesn’t cause acne, but drinking coffee loaded with milk and sugar in a big amount could make your acne worse.
But, that statement is merely a speculation, and the relationship between the two remains controversial as there haven’t been any studies done to conclusively say whether or not drinking coffee makes acne worse.
Here are some few important factors to consider:
1. Caffeine
As you already know, coffee contains a lot of caffeine which may be the sole reason you and a few millions other people in the world are consuming this beverage.
Caffeine is well known for its ability to make us feel more alert and awake, but the drawback is also potent.
One of them is the caffeine math heightened stress response in the body. Stress doesn’t cause acne, but surely can worsen it.
Stress hormones called cortisol may increase the amount of oil produced by your skin’s glands, thus worsening your acne.
And in addition to that, drinking coffee later in the day may disturb your sleep. And with less sleep, means more stress that’ll ultimately worsen your acne.
But, the effects of caffeine vary from person to person, some are more sensitive to it, while the others are more tolerant to it.
2. Sugar
The next one is the amount of sugar that you put in your coffee. If you’re the type of person who likes your coffee fairly sweet, you’ll more likely to have some trouble with your acne.
There’s already plenty of research done to show the link between sugar consumption and acne as diets high in sugar may increase the amount of insulin released by our body.
And as the result of the release of insulin is an increase in insulin-like growth factor-1 or also commonly known as IGF-1 which is a hormone known to play a role in development of acne.
So, be considerate with your sugar intake while drinking your coffee is recommended to keep the acnes away!
Also Read: “7 Most Expensive Coffees in the World“
3. Antioxidants
It may seem counterintuitive, as the antioxidants found in coffee that have actually been shown to improve your skin may be also one of the culprits that worsen the acne.
It was based on a 2006 study that compared blood levels of antioxidants between 100 people with acne and another group of 100 people without acne.
The study showed that the people with acne had significantly lower blood concentrations of these antioxidants compared to the group of people without acne.
But, further research is indeed needed to find out the effect of the antioxidants from coffee on the severity of acne.
There you have it! The explanation whether coffee causes acne or not!
We can conclude that coffee is not causing the acne, but may be the one factor to make it worse. But, these claims still needed further research.
But, regardless of that, if you want to drink some coffee, one thing that you need to be sure of is to have high quality coffee to ensure a good and safe coffee for your consumption.
But, how do you determine the high-quality one? Well, it is easy if you stay in Indonesia, as there are several standards that regulate the quality of coffee.
The standard is called SNI which stands for Standar Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian National Standard) that regulates most, if not all, of the products sold and distributed in Indonesia.
Other than that, this standard/regulation also regulates and sets the standard of many services and/or installation methods to ensure everything is up to Indonesian standard, thus improving the overall safety of many industries.
This standard surely will give us as a consumer a peace of mind, knowing that almost everything that is sold and distributed is already tested for its quality and safety.
Other than that, the SNI certification also can be quite beneficial for business owners alike. Imagine you’re a business owner and your products have already been tested and meet certain standards like the SNI.
It surely can boost the trust of Indonesian consumers especially, to your products, and you can use it as marketing tools to further increase your products’ or business’ reach within the Indonesian market.
Not going to stop there, the SNI certification also can be mandatory for certain products, take motorcycle helmets for example.
And because it must be certified by the SNI certification, having your products certified will also be a testament that your product and business have already followed Indonesian law and regulation, thus saving you from a problem that might occur later on.
Back to the black-magic-liquid we’re talking about, the SNI for the coffee itself is clearly stated in:
- SNI 2983:2024: For instant coffee
- SNI 3542:2004: For powdered coffee
SNI 01-2907-2008: For coffee bean













