Drinking coffee might boost weigh loss as the beverage was found to be stimulating a type of fat that burns calories, experts said in a study published in the journal Scientific Reports.

According to professor Michael Symonds, from the school of medicine at the University of Nottingham, the "brown fat" charged by coffee was different to "white fat" in the body, saying that people with a lower body mass index can have a higher amount of brown fat.

"Brown fat works in a different way to other fat in your body and produces heat by burning sugar and fat, often in response to cold,” Symonds explained.

"Increasing its activity improves blood sugar control as well as improving blood lipid levels and the extra calories burnt help with weight loss,” he pointed out.

"From our previous work, we knew that brown fat is mainly located in the neck region, so we were able to image someone straight after they had a drink to see if the brown fat got hotter,” Symonds pointed out.

"The results were positive and we now need to ascertain that caffeine as one of the ingredients in the coffee is acting as the stimulus or if there's another component helping with the activation of brown fat,” he said.

"We are currently looking at caffeine supplements to test whether the effect is similar.”

"Once we have confirmed which component is responsible for this, it could potentially be used as part of a weight management regime or as part of glucose regulation programme to help prevent diabetes."