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Black coffee can be good for your heart, studies show
- kalleboo 6y agohttp://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/a-z/c#term133 http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/a-z/c#term133
- AuthorizedCust 6y ago> be aware that in most studies a cup of coffee is only 8 ounces Are we sure? The standard USA measure for a cup of coffee is a 6 ounces. (Evidence: search Google on how much grounds you use per cup of coffee.) Speaking of, how much grounds are used per cup in the research, and what kinds of grounds are used? This has perplexed me for years, and the looseness in the three factors makes a big difference in how much caffeine or other “coffee stuff” one consumes.
- chrisseaton 6y ago> The standard USA measure for a cup of coffee is a 6 ounces. I don't know if these things are really 'standardised' at all. Who'd have responsibility to do that?
- DebtDeflation 6y agoI just checked the bottom of my coffee cup and it says 22 oz. So clearly not standardized.
- tuatoru 6y ago22 US fluid ounces is 650 ml, which is 2.6 standard metric cups of 250 ml. That's a large coffee cup; I hope you're not drinking espresso strength coffee!
- AuthorizedCust 6y agoNo, you’re comparing apples and oranges. It happens that the word cup can mean both an object you’re holding (your example) and a standard measurement for one particular drink (my example), and the two can have different measures.
- AuthorizedCust 6y agoThe definition of “standard” is more expansive than what you’re using. Per Merriam-Webster dictionary, a definition of standard is “something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example”.
- chrisseaton 6y agoA Starbucks 'short' is 8 'ounces'. I'm not sure you can really call 6 'ounces' standard when basic places like Starbucks don't do it that way, can you?
- AuthorizedCust 6y agoCheck Google. Searching on this suggests a strong basis for 6 oz being a customary standard. https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/25041/is-a-cup-on-a-coffee-maker-always-6-oz-is-this-a-standard-in-the-us https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/25041/is-a-cup-o... seems to back this up.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- forinti 6y agoAmericans drink really watered down coffee. In Brazil we would call it chafé (coffee tea). I've had espressos in Colombia and Portugal that probably had more caffeine than in a mug of what Americans drink. So volume doesn't really say much.
- ragnese 6y ago> Americans drink really watered down coffee. In Brazil we would call it chafé (coffee tea). Do we? How do Brazilians prepare a cup of coffee? Is the process different or do you just use a lot more grounds per amount of water?
- chrisseaton 6y ago> Americans drink really watered down coffee. > Do we? An 'Americano' is literally watered down coffee.
- AuthorizedCust 6y agoFrom an American perspective, it’s diluted espresso. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffè_Americano https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffè_Americano. Yes, I know, espresso is a kind of coffee, but it’s not what Americans are referring to as when they say “coffee”.
- ragnese 6y agoAs /u/AuthorizedCust said, I've always understood an Americano to be water + espresso, which is different than what I'd call a normal cup of (American?) coffee. Do Brazilians drink what I call espresso and call it coffee?
- jcfrei 6y agoJust wanted to reply here because you're unnecessarily condescending about American coffee. While I'm no fan of drip coffee either the caffeine content is actually higher than in the espressos you mentioned (unless Portuguese and Colombian espresso is somehow wildly different from the Italian one).
- dcolkitt 6y agoI’ve looked into this before. The answer is that, unlike alcohol, there’s no standard unit of coffee. When researchers say X cups of coffee, they’re entirely relying on their respondents’ personal reporting. So the answer is your best bet is to assume a cup of coffee is about what the average person would call a cup.
- AuthorizedCust 6y agoThere’s a 6 oz. standard coffee cup in a “that’s our custom” sense. It’s what’s referenced on many ground coffee bags. Also, https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/25041/is-a-cup-on-a-coffee-maker-always-6-oz-is-this-a-standard-in-the-us https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/25041/is-a-cup-o....
- dcolkitt 6y agoYeah, but none of the academic research on coffee will qualify this to their survey respondents. They just ask how many cups per day, then write it down. Whereas most of the research on alcohol consumption will go in detail about drink size and strength then translate to standard units.
- AuthorizedCust 6y agoI agree, which is why I have concerns about this research.
- Balgair 6y agoWhy though? Yes, you are not controlling for the amount of coffee consumed. But that should cancel out in a population based study. The null hypothesis should be that humans drink coffee in a gaussian distributed way (not like with alcohol where the consumption is exponentially distributed). If you then randomly sample from that coffee drinker population (again, gaussian distributed), you can then control for variations in the coffee consumption by comparing the averages of coffee drinkers to non-drinkers. But, yes, this does center around the hypothesis that coffee consumption is normally distributed. To confirm that I'd assume that there has been some research done on coffee consumption. Research that I have not done, to be clear. But I with no priors, I'd assume a normal distribution, because, well, darn near everything in bio is normally distributed.
- dnhz 6y agoIf you brew 6 oz of water, some amount will be left in the grounds, adding further ambiguity to the size of a cup. I've seen 5 oz and 4 oz definitions too.
- juusto 6y agoI love coffee. Even as a child when I smelled it from the kitchen and my parents were having breakfast already I wanted a sip. Coffee has been a "side hobby" of mine for years. Different beans, grinders, you name it. But now that I am older I can see how bad it is for me. My sweat smells different (as if I haven't showered in days), my jitters are increasing, I get very unfocused and aggitated and worst of all, mild panic attacks. I spent few years thinking that something was really wrong with me until I noticed that coffee has a huge negative effect when I am on crunch time. I started with teas, still not a fan, and decreasing coffee. Also moving to decaf, where are hard to enjoy because of taste. Not sure if anyone is on the same boat.
- marmaduke 6y agoI just quit completely a few days ago, and while the fatigue is overwhelming sometimes, the calm is worthwhile. Unless your job precludes it (long distance driving, piloting etc) it's probably worth a two week trial of no-caffeine. I also think teas are a terrible substitute. The closest I came was chicory which is .. an acquired taste.
- hoschicz 6y agoHave you tried redbush (Rooibos) tea? It scratches the itch for me .
- jordwest 6y agoHave you tried Rooibos? I find it just as good as black tea, great with a dash of milk and none of the caffeine.
- Jeff_Brown 6y agoI use coca tea, which is legal where I live (Bogota). It's much gentler and whole-body than coffee, which at least for me is very head-and-cardio focused. It doesn't provide a buzz, it just keeps me from feeling irresistibly sleepy. (I'm still almost always sleepy, at least at this 2800-meter altitude, but it's tolerable.)
- darau1 6y ago
- senectus1 6y agoyeah, but rreeeaaallly not good for my digestive system... I think I'll try and make my heart live longer in ways that don't involve me sitting on the toilets clutching my lower abdomen.
- distances 6y agoFor what it's worth, dark roasted coffees are much easier on the stomach. I also greatly prefer the taste of a really dark roast. It's harder to source though, most coffees are light or medium for whatever reason.
- SPBS 6y agoWhat? Adding dairy and sugar will offset the effects? Then the effects can't have been very significant to begin with. What if you drank black coffee, but also consumed sugar and dairy separately?
- brailsafe 6y agoIt depends how much and how you're consuming it, but drinking your calories, especially through coffee or soda, is a great way to get fat. Just ask any 32 year old who doesn't exercise and starts every day with shitty coffee mixed with cream and sugar. Drinking cream and sugar will probably offset any positive thing you do for your heart to some extent, unless you're doing something that really demands that kind of calorie consumption.
- benkoller 6y agoInteresting to see that they relied on random forests for feature selection. I'd wonder if a more "classical" approach would have yielded similar/comparable results, or if these findings where only correlatable due to the use of ML.
- petargyurov 6y agoFor a while I've had this idea of making a website that lets users search for a food item (e.g: coffee, wine, turmeric) and they are presented with a count of how many studies show it has positive or negative effects on the body. Of course automating the parsing of thousands of papers (and ensuring the verdict is correct) is a huge task. And that's without mentioning the reliability of each study...
- atian 6y agohttps://examine.com/ https://examine.com/ They have good health effects on nearly everything. Unfortunately, their content strategy based on truth does not perform very well. More recently they have been picking fights with the pseudoscience crowd and sensationalizing worthless content which can only be a backwards indicator.
- petargyurov 6y agoInteresting, thanks. I wonder if the "Human Effect Matrix" is manually "calculated" or if they've automated it somehow.
- arcticfox 6y agoOh, I have been browsing around and so far I love it. I am waiting for someone to rain on the parade and explain how it's actually a terrible source... What do you mean by picking fights with the pseudoscience crowd being a backwards indicator? Of all the directions they could go to boost traffic, that seems like a benign one.
- atian 6y agoArticles such as these are low quality: https://examine.com/nutrition/lemon-water/ https://examine.com/nutrition/lemon-water/
- corry 6y agoI’ve been an Examine.com subscriber for about 1.5 years now. Well worth the money IMO if you’re into some light self-experimentation w.r.t. supplements. I had used it to research supplements that have an effect on blood pressure, and it helped me reduce mine during that period by a huge amount (like 145/90 to 120/70). Now anytime I want to look into a supplement, I pop over. So refreshing vs the usual BS medical blog spam. The linking to study abstracts is the most important part, when combined with human effect matrix.
- platty 6y agodang, TIL all of those 3-5 cups a day to stay alert while working were secretly making me healthy
- feralimal 6y ago"this study has been brought to you by Starbucks!" I'm making that up.. but if you sponsor a study you want your money's worth!
- sriku 6y ago> "While unable to prove causality..." Nutrition science (imo) is doomed if researchers don't take establishment of causal connections seriously. If they declare that they haven't causally connected drinking black coffee with reduction in heart failure, we're left with having to make a random choice between drinking coffee or not drinking coffee, ... i.e. the information is useless to us. What's the purpose of this research then?
- jb1991 6y ago> How you brew your coffee also has health consequences. Unlike filter coffee makers, a French press, Turkish coffee or the boiled coffee popular in Scandinavian countries fails to catch a compound called cafestol in the oily part of coffee. Cafestol can increase your bad cholesterol or LDL (low-density lipoproteins). Most Europeans are drinking espresso, I get the impression it’s not as healthy as filter drip coffee, which is somewhat rare to find.
- klohto 6y ago> filter drip coffee, which is somewhat rare to find I disagree. Any good coffee spot that doesn't have the usual coffee franchise branding can do V60 or has batch brew. You would be surprised how many smaller cities even in central/eastern Europe have lively coffee culture. Which city disappointed you?
- jb1991 6y agoOh it’s true I have seen the occasional pour over served when I am ordering a drip coffee. But most of the cafés at least in the Netherlands or Belgium are just using espresso machines. And I very much love good espresso and cappuccino, but after reading this article, I’m thinking I should try something different at home.
- giardini 6y agoI add CoffeeMate fat-free creamer. AFAICT this creamer is tasty in a strong cup of joe. All it appears to do is take up space and make the coffee taste smoother. The label says 0 fat 0 trans fat 0 Saturated fat 0 carbohydrates 0 protein 0 cholesterol 0 carbohydrates but 10 calories per spoonful.