21 ms·

Coffee drinking linked to lower mortality risk, new study finds

243 points by mistersquid 4y ago

sithadmin 4y ago
m348e912 4y ago
Black coffee, even with a teaspoon or sugar has to be better than soda or the sugary monstrosities from Starbucks that are excluded from the study. One can of coke contains 39g (~7 teaspoons) of sugar. This study seems to be less about the benefits of coffee but rather the health risks of sugar.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  > sugary monstrosities from Starbucks Does Starbucks add sugar to the coffee? Or what do you mean. The ice coffee?
  - rngname22 4y ago
    Coffee-flavored milkshakes / cups of syrup and foam and whipped cream and caramel. They serve coffee also. If you google 'starbucks unhealthiest drinks', you'll find references to stuff like 'cinnamon roll frappucino blended coffee' which apparently had 85 grams of sugar in its largest size and 510 calories. If you're familiar with the 'packets' of sugar people sometimes sweeten coffee or tea with, 85 grams is like 20 packets. The 'sweetened cup of coffee' referenced in the study referred to a coffee with about 5 grams of sugar added.
  - pengaru 4y ago
    The majority of what they serve are coffee-spiked desserts.
- troydavis 4y ago
  > This study seems to be less about the benefits of coffee but rather the health risks of sugar. The control was not drinking coffee, and far lower all-cause mortality was observed in both black coffee and coffee with a tiny bit of sugar. Or: Yes, adding a ton of sugar to anything is unhealthy, but this study provides far more information than that. Although it's observational, the observed effect is huge. From the study: "Compared with nonconsumers, consumers of various amounts of unsweetened coffee (>0 to 1.5, >1.5 to 2.5, >2.5 to 3.5, >3.5 to 4.5, and >4.5 drinks/d) had lower risks for all-cause mortality after adjustment for lifestyle, sociodemographic, and clinical factors," [then repeats for lightly sugar-sweetened coffee, but not artificially-sweetened coffee].
  - goda90 4y ago
    "Nonconsumers" didn't factor soda drinking, energy drinking, etc. So it lumped people who were drinking larges amounts of sugar with people drinking little sugar(tea, water), and compared them to coffee drinkers, which are low to moderate amounts of sugar.
- vangelis 4y ago
  No one is forcing you to order a frappuccino. You do realize you can get drip coffee (actually pretty good) and espresso drinks without added sugar there, right?
troydavis 4y ago
Study: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-2977 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-2977 And before someone asks "But what if it's .. instead?": Yes, they controlled for lots of things: > lower risks for all-cause mortality after adjustment for lifestyle, sociodemographic, and clinical factors The patient data is from UK Biobank, which has quite a bit about each participant. While they can't control for everything (like factors that aren't documented), they can control for a lot - probably including whatever possible confounder someone jumps to. Although it's still subject to the limitations of an observational study, 171,616 people is a big cohort, mortality is clearly measurable, and the observed effect is really large. It's worth paying attention to.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  Did they compare against what the non-coffee drinkers were drinking instead? It's not surprising that coffee is substantially healthier than cola, but is it statistically healthier than tea or water?
  - cgh 4y ago
    If you look at the study, you can see they compared with “nonconsumers”, among others.
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      Access isn't available without an account. What's a "nonconsumer"? Everybody drinks something.
  - troydavis 4y ago
    I don't know any more about this study than is in the links. The NYT reporter covers some of that, though: > Scientists don’t know exactly what makes coffee so beneficial, Dr. Goldberg said, but the answer may lie in its antioxidant properties, which can prevent or delay cell damage. Coffee beans contain high amounts of antioxidants, said Beth Czerwony, a registered dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Human Nutrition in Ohio, which can help break down free radicals that cause damage to cells. Over time, a buildup of free radicals can increase inflammation in the body, which can cause plaque formation related to heart disease, she said, so dietitians recommend consuming foods and beverages that are rich in antioxidants. > There’s also the possibility that coffee drinkers tend to make healthier choices in general. They might opt for a cold brew or a cup of drip coffee instead of a less healthy source of caffeine, like an energy drink or soda, Dr. Goldberg added. “If you’re pounding Mountain Dew or Coca-Cola or Red Bull or all these other drinks, they have tons more sugar, all the artificial stuff — versus coffee, which is a generally unprocessed food.” (Side note: if someone else read this and started drinking coffee because of it, they'd probably be replacing an existing beverage choice as well. IOW, even if substitution effect was the cause or a contributing factor, people acting on the conclusions may still see the effect – and certainly would at public-health scale.)
baby 4y ago
As usual I will ask: could this mean that people who can stand coffee have stronger hearts? I can’t drink coffee because my heart will go crazy. Does that make me more at risk according to this study?
- dcolkitt 4y ago
  Similar studies have found that decaf coffee is associated with similar if not larger health gains.
  - jacobsimon 4y ago
    Oh really? I’ll search for that but if you have the link please share
    - albertgoeswoof 4y ago
      The article in question states this
- jacobsimon 4y ago
  Yeah this is the main question everyone should be researching. Basically does caffeine (in)tolerance predict health issues.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  The latest word is that this is where the previous idea about a cup of wine a day being good for you came from (it's not). Studies pursuing this question generally did not sufficiently control for the fact that people regularly drinking alcohol are in a state of health where they can regularly drink alcohol. It's not as easy to control for as it sounds because somebody might defer for reasons tied to possible health issues, but without even knowing it. Instead, just like you're talking about here simply not liking how it makes them feel.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
RobertRoberts 4y ago
These studies are known for excluding unhealthy people, especially those with heart conditions. Edit: by "these studies", I mean caffeine, cigarettes/smoking, alcohol, coffee and generally any food or "health" study. If you don't know the exact make up of the test group, then I just assume it's rigged to get a certain result.
- troydavis 4y ago
  What is "These studies"? Are you referring to all studies? All observational studies? Something else? While I can't debate "These studies" without knowing what you're referring to, this specific study provides a clear explanation of the study cohort and there's no sign that anyone was excluded or otherwise cherry-picked.
  - Blackcatmaxy 4y ago
    I know there were studies about eating organic food that at deeper levels of observation just mirror income inequality.
  - RobertRoberts 4y ago
    I updated my comment, I realize I was definitely vague in my criticism. I've found that digging deeper into studies in the past that they would leave out people with heart conditions (specifically with caffeine studies) and not state that _anywhere_ in documentation. And this only came out from investigations.
- stimpson_j_cat 4y ago
  Does your general comment have to do with this specific study? They mention controlling for all the things you mentioned.
  - RobertRoberts 4y ago
    Studies I've read in the past have claimed the same thing, yet still excluded people that would skew their results without reporting it. I have a friend who does statistical analysis for a living, and we have a game where he points out the flaws that are only obvious to those that know statistics and research well, and us laymen are oblivious. A medical doctor once told me "coffee must be good for you because I drink it!". It seems common that people just want science to agree with them, and they don't care how or why. I can't prove my point on this article (not enough time/energy/will) but I have watched health articles for years and you can go back to news sites and find this same exact study done over and over, reported in news organizations as if it's new every time. One stupid example, articles from just CNN going back to 2010 just on one page of search results: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=site%3Acnn.com+coffee+good+for+you&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=site%3Acnn.com+coffee+good+...
jb1991 4y ago
The interesting bit here is it seems even more beneficial to add a little sugar to your coffee. It doesn’t make much sense to me, considering all the negative news about sugar in general.
- 323 4y ago
  Maybe adding sugar allows you to drink more coffee. Like how children medicine is sweetened to increase compliance.
- Jaygles 4y ago
  I wonder if the little bit of sugar kicks off some digestive processes that can bring in more of the beneficial things
goda90 4y ago
>There’s also the possibility that coffee drinkers tend to make healthier choices in general. They might opt for a cold brew or a cup of drip coffee instead of a less healthy source of caffeine, like an energy drink or soda, Dr. Goldberg added. “If you’re pounding Mountain Dew or Coca-Cola or Red Bull or all these other drinks, they have tons more sugar, all the artificial stuff — versus coffee, which is a generally unprocessed food.” It sounds like we need a study comparing people who rarely drink anything but water vs coffee drinking vs energy drink/soda drinking.
- swozey 4y ago
  Also I'm a no-coffee but energy drink (Bang usually) drinker and my energy drinks have either 0-3 grams of sugar... I drink water all day long, no sodas, etc. I'm sure 280 grams of caffeine can't be that great for me, of course.
  - antihero 4y ago
    Better than 280 grams of cocaine though.
  - ISL 4y ago
    280 grams would be very bad. 280 mg, substantially better :).
    - swozey 4y ago
      Haha, I thought grams sounded weird as I was typing it. Thanks!
  - gigaflop 4y ago
    ~300mg all at once is a recipe for a bad time, for me. I'd rather drink 2 Monsters (0-cal, 140mg caff each) than 1 Bang, and space them out further. But I'll have a C4 once in a blue moon, if I plan to hit the gym very soon after.
  - NoPicklez 4y ago
    Same with me, coffee drinker but also think sugar free energy drinks such as Red Bull and Bang.
papito 4y ago
A study described in the Dorito Effect took millions of grocery receipts and analyzed them. Turned out people who had wine in their carts also had an overall healthy selection of food at checkout. The customers who bought beer stuffed their carts with all kinds of junk. So there is that. So much for "a glass of wine a day is good for your heart".
- elevaet 4y ago
  Another well-documented problem with the "glass of wine good for your heart" studies was that the groups that didn't drink wine usually included teetotalers, who had likely already damaged their bodies in the past with alcohol abuse, and had since sworn off.
uhtred 4y ago
> Those who drank 1.5 to 3.5 cups of coffee per day, even with a teaspoon of sugar, were up to 30 percent less likely to die during the study period than those who didn’t drink coffee. Those who drank unsweetened coffee were 16 to 21 percent less likely to die during the study period Eh? So having sugar in the coffee was better than no sugar? am I reading this wrong?
- ericmay 4y ago
  Yea I thought that was worded a little confusingly as well, or at least my intuition is confusing me versus what was written. I also wonder if it's just increased consumption of water via coffee that is helpful here. They're saying it's not the caffeine so would it then just be the residue from the beans soaking in the water?
- mikkergp 4y ago
  This effect makes me very curious, because yeah I wouldn't think adding sugar would be better, but one effect could be that - if people are really only using a teaspoon of sugar, maybe people who are able to moderate the sugar intake in coffee are good at moderating diet in other ways as well? I drink black coffee, but, it's not that I'm being healthful, it's I like the dark strong flavor of coffee, and that desire for "strong flavors" means I don't always make the best health choices in other areas.
- harry8 4y ago
  If you've had health (&/or weight) issues it is common to adjust your diet, eg to cut out excess sugar. Making the switch to no sugar in coffee is pretty easy and likely to stick (even if doughnuts come back). If you've never had health issues you keep putting your teaspoon of sugar in your coffee and don't think about it. How do you adjust for that in the analysis?
  - jjcon 4y ago
    They adjusted for clinical factors though so unless they were factors that were unknown to the respondents it shouldn't be that
alfiedotwtf 4y ago
Stands up in muscle pose: "I AM INVINCIBLE"
- doctor_eval 4y ago
  Came here to say the same thing. “I’M GONNA TO LIVE FOREVA!!!!!”
alexk307 4y ago
People can argue about the design of the study all they want, but 170k people followed over 7 years is enough evidence for me that drinking black coffee is beneficial to my health.
- pigeonhole123 4y ago
  A systemic problem in the study will not get better by running more data through it.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  The researchers themselves state they're not sure if coffee is good for you or it is indicative of other lifestyle factors.
  - alexk307 4y ago
    Right, but it's highly correlated to drinking coffee. Enough for me to continue drinking my 2 cups of black coffee a day.
carbocation 4y ago
As someone who also heavily uses UK Biobank in my research, I would just encourage people to think about this effect size and ask whether it's plausible. If true, coffee has a more powerful effect on your risk of all-cause death than any drug for most diseases. It's wildly implausible. The results are confounded. There is no causal anchor. Having said that, coffee is great.
- troydavis 4y ago
  > There is no causal anchor. While it’s closer to speculation than science, past discussion of health benefits from coffee focused on antioxidants. Coffee, green and black tea, and cocoa have relatively high antioxidant content[1], particularly after adjusting for quantity consumed. I haven’t seen any breakdowns of how the average person ingests antioxidants, but it’s not like everyone eats 3 oz of blueberries a day :-) Beverages might be a major source. Again, this is pretty close to speculation, but it’s not nothing. [1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11453788/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11453788/ (a quick citation - IANA expert)
  - 323 4y ago
    Note that there is a suspected link between anti-oxidants and cancer. The mechanism is pretty simple: oxidative stress is a warning system to the cell that initiates various repair mechanisms, up to apoptosis. Too much anti-oxidants suppress this warning system, thus allowing a damaged cell to go on. One paper, there are many: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30674247/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30674247/
  - carbocation 4y ago
    Yours is perfectly fine speculation for a message board. I just think that the result is likely confounded, and there is no reason to reach for a biological mechanism when the study wasn't causal in the first place. I tend to think along the lines of `rsync: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31595857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31595857
- 323 4y ago
  > a more powerful effect on your risk of all-cause death than any drug for most diseases But these people were mostly healthy. I'm sure that coffee doesn't work better compared to medicine if you are diseased,
dncornholio 4y ago
On another note, I always break sugar cubes in half and even a half is sometimes too much. I don't understand how people can drink coffee with 1 or even 2 cubes.
antiverse 4y ago
I drink anywhere between 0-5 cups of black coffee a day. By cup I mean a standard size coffee cup you'd find in any store. Sometimes I'll throw in a cappuccino (double espresso) because I'm feeling like having one. So far I've lived through studies telling me I will live shorter, and studies telling me I will live longer. There seems to be an unhealthy neurosis/anxiety built up around staving off death as long as possible - the number of articles on HN, companies started around longevity by people who are, to put it bluntly, scared shitless of dying, is disturbing. You can't lower your risk of dying. If enjoy a cup of coffee, then enjoy a damn cup of coffee regardless of what studies say.
- afarviral 4y ago
  Its not so much the dying for me, but losing out on some living because of some poor choices. Im always greatful for the scoop on how to live longer, and your prescription to just not worry about it and enjoy whatever would not work for me, as I'd take too many opiates, smoke, and stop exercising which would shorten and narrow my life.
- krageon 4y ago
  > You can't lower your risk of dying. Of course you can. Moderate exercise unambiguously makes this risk lower. Of course, even with much lower risk today you will eventually die. Perhaps this is what you meant.
jokoon 4y ago
so why doctors keep saying to drink less coffee? not to mention sleep problems...
- Tagbert 4y ago
  Not all doctors say that. Yes, if you are having sleep problems they might tell you to cut back on coffee and other caffeine sources. Some people are particularly sensitive to caffeine and get jitters and have trouble sleeping. Most people do not have this problem and as long as they don’t drink coffee late in the day, it does not cause sleep problems.
- karaterobot 4y ago
  I hadn't heard doctors (and by that I mean: researchers) saying to drink less coffee, except if it's causing sleep problems.
- 0daystock 4y ago
  Most doctors receive inadequate nutrition training, if any, and are usually unqualified to speak about these topics.
- xeromal 4y ago
  Doctors aren't a monolith and I doubt all of them have read this study yet. I've found most sleep problems disappear if I stop drinking coffee before 3pm. YMMV. In college, I could drink coffee at 9pm with a bowl of icecream and it didn't hurt my sleep at all. lol
travisgriggs 4y ago
Curious how well they were able to control for economic factors. How are they not sure it’s not “People who can afford to buy lots of coffee can also afford other lifestyle ingredients that lead to longer life, relatively.” ? Latter Day Saints and Adventists don”t drink coffee, and yet they get to brag about better than average longevity too. But that too could just be a canary for economic indicators.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  > Latter Day Saints What's the reason not to drink coffee for them?
  - travisgriggs 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_of_Wisdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_of_Wisdom
paskozdilar 4y ago
I've been a caffeine user for my whole life - started drinking energy drinks as a kid, took caffeine powder/pills in college for studying, drank a lot of coffee at work - and I've stopped about a month ago. I find that caffeine made me anxious, so much that all the energy wasn't even worth it anymore, as I couldn't focus on anything from anxiety. After stopping, my anxiety has went down so much that I feel I'm able to do much more work then before, even if I'm doing it slower, because I can just relax and focus on what I need to do, without being distracted by every single intrusive thought I have and without the crash that inevitably comes every day after caffeine wears off. I don't care about "health benefits" of coffee, to be honest. Caffeine is a crappy drug (for me), so nowdays I only save it for situations where I have to stay awake for longer than I usually can.
- neves 4y ago
  The study result isn't about caffeine and dying, but about coffee and dying. There's a lot of substances in coffee beyond caffeine.
- smachiz 4y ago
  This sounds like you were on the very extreme end of caffeine consumption...
  - paskozdilar 4y ago
    In college, yes. I've always had issues with focus, and first year of college was overwhelming. I cut out all unnecessary time sinks, and I've found that I lack enough "focus" in a day - at some point I'd just read, but be unable to engage with any words I'm reading. Caffeine pills helped me study for longer, however, the tolerance made me take more and more until at some point I was taking up to 2000mg of caffeine a day. I was barely functioning from anxiety, but I managed to be amongst better students on my year. At work we have an espresso machine, so it's very easy to just "grab a cup" when I feel tired while working on an important task. It wasn't strange for me to drink 5-6 cups per day. Nowdays, I'm only drinking coffee if it's a social event, and I keep a hard limit of one cup per day.
- 4y ago
zwieback 4y ago
Bummer, I'm in my fifties now and used to love coffee but now I just don't really enjoy it that much. Mostly switched to tea, is there a study that tea is even better?
rsync 4y ago
Alternative interpretation: neither the coffee nor the caffeine is helpful. Instead, coffee consumption is so pervasive that coffee drinkers are “normal” and many people that don’t consume coffee do so because it’s actually hurtful or uncomfortable … and that likely correlates to other weaknesses. The same interpretation should be considered for all of those moderate drinking studies… I am quite certain nobody is getting a health benefit from alcohol.
- nabla9 4y ago
  > all of those moderate drinking studies… I am quite certain nobody is getting a health benefit from alcohol. The effect where moderate alcohol use is beneficial have disappeared after better studies. It didn't prevent it from becoming "common wisdom".
  - mrits 4y ago
    I'm still on a small glass of wine with my meal diet. I'm also a big fan of 6-7 meals a day.
    - tragictrash 4y ago
      Does this mean you consume 6-7 small glasses of wine a day?
      - yunohn 4y ago
        Yes, and I think they were just being sarcastic.
      - xeromal 4y ago
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- danschumann 4y ago
  So the correlation is like a societal strength test of worthiness?
keybored 4y ago
The culture around me is to drink black coffee or lattes. No added sugar or cream. Most people in my office space who seem to drink coffee as their hot beverage of choice. There’s not a lot of chatter about coffee being healthy or unhealthy. The only unhealthy thing that people tend to want to avoid is being unable to sleep due to drinking too much of it or too late. Another cultural thing is to joke about the first cup of joe being mandatory if you want to wake up properly (at the office). In that light it makes sense to not really consider whether it is healthy or unhealthy; it’s as if your body needs it anyway so you either gotta get it or sleepwalk through the day.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  Caffeine is habit forming. If you're in the place where you "have to" have a cup of coffee every morning just to feel OK you can probably get over it after about two weeks of abstinence. Probably the hardest time is the second day.
  - thirtyfivecent 4y ago
    Habit forming? This is obviously a physical dependence like any other drug. There are thousands of case reports on /r/decaf outlining a recovery period of months and years with horrible side effects like anhedonia, panic attacks, sleep issues, brain fog, cramping. The hardest day is day 2?? You honestly believe that is sufficient payback for the years of being buzzed up and artificially interested in boring and pointless office work by drinking this poison?
    - graeme 4y ago
      Really? I read that sub. Recall consensus there was a couple of weeks based on half life. I did it, really sucked, but then total improvement.
      - thirtyfivecent 4y ago
        3 of the top 5 posts of all time on that subreddit as an example are speaking in terms of "915 days caffiene free", "2.5 years caffee free" .. etc. These are the most dramatic and interesting stories shared there but the people there are obviously interested in long term case studies and these stories are popular for a reason. Nobody cares about "2 weeks" there everyone quickly realises this is a long slog to getting back to normal of months and years.
steviedotboston 4y ago
I dunno, call me skeptical but I think everyone has a 100% risk of dying.
- phabricator 4y ago
  lel this comment is 2 zany 4 me XD
- carapace 4y ago
  I had the same thought. "Coffee is the Fountain of Youth" is not what they meant, eh? :) (Although I often joke that you can actually see me turn from a zombie into a live human being with that first sip in the morning.)
bell-cot 4y ago
Quick Theory: The regular coffee drinkers are (on average) folks with more energy/time/money (which keeping up a coffee habit requires), or working (free & convenient coffee at the office), or other things that correlate with better physical & mental health.
- stimpson_j_cat 4y ago
  yes, this is mentioned in the article > there may be other lifestyle factors contributing to that lower mortality risk among people who drink coffee, like a healthy diet or a consistent exercise routine
- yourusername 4y ago
  Coffee is dirt cheap. A kilo of coffee is around €8 and you can make ~16 liters or 80 cups with that.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    That must be for people who hate coffee, or hate themselves, or both. Even the cheapest grocery store brand ground coffee that comes in buckets sells for $0.4/oz which is about twice the price you mentioned. Anything worth drinking costs $1/oz where I live.
rhacker 4y ago
A lot of people that don't drink coffee have heart issues. Even ones that don't know they have those kinds of issues don't drink coffee because it makes them feel bad. It's typically the heart doing uncomfortable things for them. And since they already have heart issues - ding ding ding. Correlation. It's not that coffee is making people healthier, it's just a substance that is addictive that people that don't have heart issues drink.
- chris_j 4y ago
  What is it that makes people with heart issues feel bad when they drink coffee?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
layer8 4y ago
Even if a real causal relation between coffee consumption and longevity was proved, I feel that the benefit of that finding would be limited as long as the actual mechanism isn’t understood. Few people who don’t like drinking coffee will start drinking it because of that, and those who like coffee drink it anyway (they’ll just feel even better doing so, maybe).
karmakaze 4y ago
I drink coffee because it became part of my routine, then I got to enjoy it, and now it helps me focus while working. One aspect I notice from my caffeine intake is that it helps me deal with stuff in general--nothing stresses me out. The downside is that I also feel positive things less as well, so I try to limit it to morning/mid-afternoon of weekdays. I can certainly see in my case living a life with less stress promoting longevity but with less richness of experience.
neonate 4y ago
https://archive.ph/L5k9P https://archive.ph/L5k9P
orblivion 4y ago
Hopefully it compensates for my increased mortality risk from beer.
softwaredoug 4y ago
A plausible theory is people who CANT drink coffee, or dont drink as much, have health issues that often prevent them from drinking coffee...
- tarentel 4y ago
  The article specifically says there were benefits to people who drink decaffeinated and caffeinated alike.
  - rhacker 4y ago
    There is still caffeine in decaf. Enough that my heart issue brother can't drink that either.
    - nomel 4y ago
      According to a quick search, ~2mg vs ~100mg.
      - thih9 4y ago
        I’ve heard that sometimes ordering decaf will get you a caffeinated drink and that a lot of places disregard or don’t pay enough attention to that particular request. I have no source or any numbers though.
        hawk_ 4y ago
        That's why I always order instant decaf so I can look at the packet before dissolving it.
        rhacker 4y ago
        That's a smart thing to do - just ask for hot water at starbucks (if you're out of the house of course) and slip in a decaf tube. It would probably be free.
      - 4y ago
guerrilla 4y ago
How many times has this been replicated? We should probably just flag science posts that haven't been at this point.
Johnny555 4y ago
Those who drank 1.5 to 3.5 cups of coffee per day, even with a teaspoon of sugar, were up to 30 percent less likely to die during the study period than those who didn’t drink coffee. I wish coffee studies would report results in ounces (or better, ml) instead of ambiguous "cups" The Coffee industry uses 6 ounce cups, the USA standard "cup" is 8 ounces, and the imperial cup is 10 ounces (the study was based on UK data). I drink around 12 oz of coffee a day and I drink it out of a single large coffee cup, is that 1 cup, 2 cups, 1.5 cups, or 1.2 cups?
- bufferout 4y ago
  A lot of the world drinks espresso. Mg of caffeine probably the appropriate measure here?
  - stubish 4y ago
    It is a study on self reported data. They won't know how strong the coffee was, or even the size of the cup. Or if the teaspoons of sugar were heaped or flat.
  - krageon 4y ago
    It is not, because the study also looked at decaffeinated coffee.
danw1979 4y ago
I’ll have a guess at the causation here: more coffee consumed => better code written => higher income => higher standard of living, correlated with better health outcomes.
arisAlexis 4y ago
Amen
pazimzadeh 4y ago
What if people who drink coffee get more done, people who get more done are more fulfilled, and people who are more fulfilled live longer? Edit: doesn't explain that the effect also worked with decaf. Maybe coffee contains other compounds and secondary metabolites which have health benefits
carlgreene 4y ago
> The mortality risk remained lower for people who drank both decaffeinated and caffeinated coffee. Very interesting! I've seen this conclusion many times in the past decade+ but have yet for someone to call out the aspect of caffeine. I wouldn't suspect caffeine to result in lower mortality risk, but you never know
- stubish 4y ago
  I forget the details, but a different study in recent years found that decaf and caffeinated did have different links. IIRC it was measuring both cancer rates and heart disease, and found positive correlation with both reduced for caffeinated coffee but only one for decaffeinated. And years before that, a study that found positive correlations with caffeinated coffee, but not straight caffeine, and not decaffeinated coffee, which indicated some sort of interaction with the coffee compounds and the caffeine in particular (very fuzzy on this one).
leonroy 4y ago
I wonder if it's because coffee as an appetite suppressant causes colorific reduction in people - effectively, they eat less. Fasting has recently been proven to also lower mortality risk by a large amount. > Coffee suppresses your appetite because it contains chlorogenic acids which are a type of phytochemical compounds that help control hunger pangs and suppress your appetite. Because of this, you don’t need to drink caffeinated coffee to integrate it into your weight loss program; decaffeinated coffee will do just fine. Source for the quote: https://energeticlifestyle.com/how-to-use-coffee-as-an-appetite-suppressant/ https://energeticlifestyle.com/how-to-use-coffee-as-an-appet... Pubmed source which corroborates coffee as an appetite suppressant: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6683100/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6683100/
- ip26 4y ago
  I can’t be the only one who thinks, I’m getting hungry but I don’t have time to eat - maybe I’ll have another cup instead.
resters 4y ago
Does instant coffee count?
hereforphone 4y ago
Mortality risk remains 100%.
11thEarlOfMar 4y ago
What are the differences in Cause of Death between the coffee and non-coffee drinkers? For example, are coffee drinkers less likely to die in a crash commuting to work in the morning? Or less likely to die from stroke?
- floxy 4y ago
  Yes. The claim is that all-cause mortality decreased. So coffee makes it less likely that you died from stroke, heart disease, cancer, infectious disease, Alzheimer's, car accidents, drowning, drug overdoses, natural disasters, suicide, etc..
slymon99 4y ago
Another nutritional epidemiology study with an absurdly large effect size that is almost certainly due to confounding factors. Yes, the researchers did an admirable job trying to control for confounders. Doesn't matter. Confounding factors for health are impossible to adjust for, whether it's healthy user bias or nutritional choices or a million other possible factors. There's just no way to take this sort of causality seriously when humans are living infinitely complex lives. Stop wasting money and do an RCT. Also, traditional media is still embarrassingly bad at communicating correlation vs causation. How does this get past a science editorial board.
- beebmam 4y ago
  That's why RCTs are the gold standard. You can test nearly exactly the effect of an intervention.
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    Meta analyses > RCTs
    - raffraffraff 4y ago
      Yes, but go to the Cochrane library and try to get sensible analysis on anything that doesn't have a few RCTs under its belt, and Cochrane just shrugs.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    You can't do RCTs on something as common as coffee consumption. What you can do is mendelian randomization studies. There are genes which influence bitter taste which seem like obvious candidates: If coffee tastes like pure quinine to you, you're probably drinking less of it than you otherwise would. A quick search shows that there have been M.R. studies on coffee, and they do suggest the relationships between coffee drinking and various good health outcomes aren't causal, just like the ones on alcohol. At this point, we should be suspicious of any "U-shaped" effect curves of extremely common and popular habits.
RobertRoberts 4y ago
Be very critical of health studies. A comment of mine got flagged because I think I hit a nerve. Here's CNN saying coffee is good for you as if it's a new idea since 2010 on one page of search results alone, https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Acnn.com+coffee+good+for+you https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Acnn.com+coffee+good+for+you Here's Fox News saying the same thing: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%253Afoxnews.com+coffee+good+for+you https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%253Afoxnews.com+coffee+good+f...
LAC-Tech 4y ago
I've cut down coffee intake by a lot, but still have a little bit. For those of you that have quit completely - does the roller coaster stop? By that I mean... you have caffeine, feel productive, caffeine wears off, you feel unproductive, rinse and repeat. Are you over all more productive or do the peaks and valleys just average out into nothing?
- krageon 4y ago
  I have a weird habit of quitting for 6-12 months and then resuming drinking it. I've done so twice now (once when I was a bit younger, and the second time recently) and my impression is that overall everything is better when I do drink it. It tastes nice, the effects are nice and if you don't overdo it (i.e. increase your consumption above a normal threshold, like a small cup per day) it stays pretty nice forever. But this is just the case for me - I've heard plenty of people say that without coffee their life is better on average (more focus on average throughout the day). tl;dr: Overall more productive. It's also more pleasurable.
brokenkebab2 4y ago
I'm somewhat puzzled by the "lower mortality risk" used without time constraints. Don't we all have 100% mortality risk?
0daystock 4y ago
> Primary Funding Source: > National Natural Science Foundation of China China's scientific credibility went out with the window when they lied about spreading a weaponized virus a few years back.
- WalterGR 4y ago
  What forum directed you to come to HN? Is keybase involved in some way?
  - 0daystock 4y ago
    Don't think so, I've been lurking for well over 10 years.
topicseed 4y ago
> Conclusion: Moderate consumption of unsweetened and sugar-sweetened coffee was associated with lower risk for death.
harveywi 4y ago
This is an interesting study. As someone who only drinks sweetened coffee, I will start stirring in some unsweetened coffee in order to get the health benefits.
- digikata 4y ago
  The sweet spot would seem to be for you to drink two cups a day.
  - outworlder 4y ago
    The unsweet spot, I guess?
    - digikata 4y ago
      Perhaps I'm reading the summary of numbers wrong, but it looks like at 1.5-2.5 cups a day, the hazard ratio was 0.69 for sweetened coffee drinkers vs 0.71 for unsweetened coffee at 2.5-4.5 cups a day. With confidence intervals on those, about the same even if the number of cups is different, but odd that 1.5-2.5 cups per day unsweetened comes out worse than sweetened.
yawz 4y ago
I drink mostly decaf. I’m glad that the same benefits apply to decaf.
- capitainenemo 4y ago
  Hm... it says "also observed" doesn't say necessarily at same levels. Decaf after all has some caffeine in it.
  - capitainenemo 4y ago
    Hm, well actually, since someone posted the PDF above, seems you're right. Decaf did quite well (although perhaps noisier due to smaller sample size). I do wonder about some of those error bars and controls though. For example artificially sweetened coffee decaffinated at 1.5-2.5 cups per day seems to have a higher rate of death (1.11) - but artifically sweetened decaffinated at 3.5-4.5 cups has half the rate of death (0.52). By contrast black decaf at 3.5-4.5 per day does worse than that (0.66). Anyway, if there's any significance to this, you're right that caffeine does not seem to play into it much in their stats.
franciscop 4y ago
I'm bad at reading scientific papers, could someone clarify this please? It says in the results: > Compared with nonconsumers, consumers of various amounts of unsweetened coffee (>0 to 1.5, >1.5 to 2.5, >2.5 to 3.5, >3.5 to 4.5, and >4.5 drinks/d) had lower risks for all-cause mortality after adjustment for lifestyle, sociodemographic, and clinical factors, with respective hazard ratios of 0.79 (95% CI, 0.70 to 0.90), 0.84 (CI, 0.74 to 0.95), 0.71 (CI, 0.62 to 0.82), 0.71 (CI, 0.60 to 0.84), and 0.77 (CI, 0.65 to 0.91); the respective estimates for consumption of sugar-sweetened coffee were 0.91 (CI, 0.78 to 1.07), 0.69 (CI, 0.57 to 0.84), 0.72 (CI, 0.57 to 0.91), 0.79 (CI, 0.60 to 1.06), and 1.05 (CI, 0.82 to 1.36). It explicitly says that the all-cause mortality for unsweetened coffee was lower, that's pretty clear. But then it just gives (Confidence Interval?) numbers for "the respective estimates for consumption of sugar-sweetened coffee" but doesn't say if it lowers all-cause mortality, is that implied as well? Or are those numbers just confidence intervals without giving an assessment?
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  The hazard ratio being <1 means that mortality was lower.
  - franciscop 4y ago
    I see, thanks! So those are the hazard ratios for each of the segments of consumption of coffee, right? (5 coffee drinking segments, 5 hazard ratios)
    - cheald 4y ago
      Correct, ">3.5 to 4.5" / "0.71 (CI, 0.60 to 0.84)" means "we're 95% confident that people who had 3.5 to 4.5 unsweetened coffees per day had 60-84% the risk of mortality of baseline (average 71%)".
      - tawktiem 4y ago
        Ohhhhh, thank you! That makes sense. It seems there was an implicit assumption of 95% (p<0.05), is that right?
kkfx 4y ago
Not to criticize but... I've read so many (abstract of) studies on coffee and tea with such marginal conclusion on all sides that I'm pretty convinced the real state of thing is: at normal consumption level they are nor good nor bad. That's is.
AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
Couple thoughts/ideas for further research: - Is sweetened coffee also adding creamer? I don't know of many people who take coffee with sugar but no cream. They usually go together. - Were coffee preparation methods at all considered? I don't know if everyone in the trial was being served the same coffee or if respondents prepared coffee in whatever manner they liked and just reported how much coffee/how sweet they made it. Different methods may require more or less sweetner, so the guy who takes it black might be e.g. doing a Chemex/pourover, while the guy doing cream and sugar might be going through a standard drip. A third might be doing a French Press. The extractions from those methods will be wildly different.
- bena 4y ago
  I've seen it all. Black. Sugar, no cream. Cream, no sugar. I think your observations may be more influenced by who you know.
  - bestouff 4y ago
    I mostly see people taking coffee without cream. Sugar or no sugar is very roughly a 50/50 affair.
    - mirekrusin 4y ago
      My poison is coffee with frothed oat milk (oat milks are so good nowadays), no need for extra sugar. 2nd one black - pure or with one drop of la perruche sugar cube - depending on the mood.
- dwringer 4y ago
  Cuban coffee is made with (a lot of) sugar but no cream. Granted that might not make up a big percentage of the study group if it's from the UK.
  - justinlloyd 4y ago
    I do not know if coffee habits in the UK have changed in the past 25 years since I lived there, and I fully expect that they have with the rise of Starbucks and other "gourmet" coffee chains, but a lot of UK coffee consumption was instant coffee granules, at least during the 1980's and 1990's. That would be an interesting piece of data to observe, what kind of coffee were these people drinking? Instant? Ground? Pods?
criddell 4y ago
What could this mean: > The association between artificially sweetened coffee and mortality was less consistent. Also, is unsweetened coffee black coffee, or could it be coffee + some type of creamer? I’m assuming it must be the latter because if they meant black coffee they would have said that.
- lvass 4y ago
  I'm looking for clarification on that as well. >I’m assuming it must be the latter because if they meant black coffee they would have said that. The authors seem to have Chinese names, a country with extremely low dairy consumption, so I wouldn't assume that. I'm from south america and never seen a coffee with creamer, had to look up what that means.
  - criddell 4y ago
    > I'm from south america and never seen a coffee with creamer, had to look up what that means. I didn’t know what else to call it. It’s typically dairy or a dairy substitute but I’m also thinking of things like steamed milk in a latte, flat white, or cappuccino (those are global, no?).
teslabox 4y ago
I didn't take up coffee drinking until my late-20's. At first I took my coffee black, then I read how caffeine boosts the metabolism. This draws down sugar from the blood. To avoid a cortisol response, it's best to complement the caffeine in coffee with sugar. This study seems to confirm that fake sugar is harmful. I have family who drink fake-sugar cola products - these don't help their weight. I've seen one person fall apart 'mentally' within 1/2 hour of drinking an electrolyte beverage made with sucralose and other fake sugar. Ideally glucose is consumed with potassium, to avoid insulin release: milk, orange juice, potatoes, etc... Fructose does not stimulate the release of insulin.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  > This draws down sugar from the blood. To avoid a cortisol response.. I mean, so does running, swimming, watching an exciting movie.. > This study seems to confirm that fake sugar is harmful. This study confirms no such thing. > have family who drink fake-sugar cola products - these don't help their weight. Yes but (probably) not because the fake sugar but because their palette is too sweet focused. You need dietary change to lose weight. > I've seen one person fall apart 'mentally' within 1/2 hour of drinking an electrolyte beverage made with sucralose and other fake sugar. I've seen someone have a heart attack after crossing paths with a black cat. I don't think it was the cats fault.
- robonerd 4y ago
  "electrolyte beverages", e.g. gatorade, are generally not caffeinated. Why would somebody fall apart after drinking one without sugar? It's basically just water with food coloring and a bit of sodium and potassium. Also, I've been taking caffeine pills for the better part of a decade, often on an empty stomach. There's no crash from the absence of sugar, the only sort of crash I get occurs a few days after each time I try to quit the stuff.
  - outworlder 4y ago
    > Why would somebody fall apart after drinking one without sugar Probably dehydrated and whatever hydration they did get wasn't sufficient.
em500 4y ago
The full text pdf is gated, but it's probably indentical to this one: https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/documents/16093/Sweetened%20and%20Unsweetened%20Coffee.pdf https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/documents/16093/Sweetened%20...
AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
zetazzed 4y ago
Crazy to see that Annals of Internal Medicine prominently highlights "metrics" for the article including "Picked up by 215 news outlets." Are academics supposed to be like Buzzfeed writers now, chasing media instead of peer citations or lasting impact in practice?
barefeg 4y ago
How do they discard confounding variables? Is there any causal link between how people drink coffee and mortality, or is this just a correlation?
- Udo 4y ago
  > How do they discard confounding variables? I don't think they do. Which is much better than correcting for variables and doing it badly. Anecdotally, I am the only healthy person I know of in my group who voluntarily uses artificial sweetener. It seems to me that the use of artificial sweetener is strongly associated with health problems such as morbid obesity and diabetes: people who don't have to don't use them. Regarding artificial sweetener itself being causal there is very little reliable data to support that. There does seem to be a link between Aspartame and (bladder) cancer but it has so far only been shown in animal models.
  - outworlder 4y ago
    > It seems to me that the use of artificial sweetener is strongly associated with health problems such as morbid obesity and diabetes Yeah. Cause and effect seems to be reversed here. I started using sweeteners because of my coffee consumption and watching the effect it was having on teeth. Later on cut the sweeteners completely, just because they don't taste as good as actual sugar, so why bother. I don't think most are as bad as some people believe. A lot of it has probably to do with the notion that they are 'artificial'. Well, no more so than pure sugar. Go chew on some sugar cane if you want something more "natural" :) Even that must be done in moderation.
  - diamondlovesyou 4y ago
    Artificial sweeteners don't taste like sugar, at least none that I've tried. They're sweet, but it ain't sugar.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
cpurdy 4y ago
I'm invincible!

243 points by mistersquid 4y ago

Black coffee, even with a teaspoon or sugar has to be better than soda or the sugary monstrosities from Starbucks that are excluded from the study. One can of coke contains 39g (~7 teaspoons) of sugar. This study seems to be less about the benefits of coffee but rather the health risks of sugar.

rightbyte 4y ago
> sugary monstrosities from Starbucks Does Starbucks add sugar to the coffee? Or what do you mean. The ice coffee?
- rngname22 4y ago
  Coffee-flavored milkshakes / cups of syrup and foam and whipped cream and caramel. They serve coffee also. If you google 'starbucks unhealthiest drinks', you'll find references to stuff like 'cinnamon roll frappucino blended coffee' which apparently had 85 grams of sugar in its largest size and 510 calories. If you're familiar with the 'packets' of sugar people sometimes sweeten coffee or tea with, 85 grams is like 20 packets. The 'sweetened cup of coffee' referenced in the study referred to a coffee with about 5 grams of sugar added.
- pengaru 4y ago
  The majority of what they serve are coffee-spiked desserts.
troydavis 4y ago
> This study seems to be less about the benefits of coffee but rather the health risks of sugar. The control was not drinking coffee, and far lower all-cause mortality was observed in both black coffee and coffee with a tiny bit of sugar. Or: Yes, adding a ton of sugar to anything is unhealthy, but this study provides far more information than that. Although it's observational, the observed effect is huge. From the study: "Compared with nonconsumers, consumers of various amounts of unsweetened coffee (>0 to 1.5, >1.5 to 2.5, >2.5 to 3.5, >3.5 to 4.5, and >4.5 drinks/d) had lower risks for all-cause mortality after adjustment for lifestyle, sociodemographic, and clinical factors," [then repeats for lightly sugar-sweetened coffee, but not artificially-sweetened coffee].
- goda90 4y ago
  "Nonconsumers" didn't factor soda drinking, energy drinking, etc. So it lumped people who were drinking larges amounts of sugar with people drinking little sugar(tea, water), and compared them to coffee drinkers, which are low to moderate amounts of sugar.
vangelis 4y ago
No one is forcing you to order a frappuccino. You do realize you can get drip coffee (actually pretty good) and espresso drinks without added sugar there, right?

troydavis 4y ago

Study: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-2977 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-2977 And before someone asks "But what if it's .. instead?": Yes, they controlled for lots of things: > lower risks for all-cause mortality after adjustment for lifestyle, sociodemographic, and clinical factors The patient data is from UK Biobank, which has quite a bit about each participant. While they can't control for everything (like factors that aren't documented), they can control for a lot - probably including whatever possible confounder someone jumps to. Although it's still subject to the limitations of an observational study, 171,616 people is a big cohort, mortality is clearly measurable, and the observed effect is really large. It's worth paying attention to.

bryanlarsen 4y ago
Did they compare against what the non-coffee drinkers were drinking instead? It's not surprising that coffee is substantially healthier than cola, but is it statistically healthier than tea or water?
- cgh 4y ago
  If you look at the study, you can see they compared with “nonconsumers”, among others.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    Access isn't available without an account. What's a "nonconsumer"? Everybody drinks something.
- troydavis 4y ago
  I don't know any more about this study than is in the links. The NYT reporter covers some of that, though: > Scientists don’t know exactly what makes coffee so beneficial, Dr. Goldberg said, but the answer may lie in its antioxidant properties, which can prevent or delay cell damage. Coffee beans contain high amounts of antioxidants, said Beth Czerwony, a registered dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Human Nutrition in Ohio, which can help break down free radicals that cause damage to cells. Over time, a buildup of free radicals can increase inflammation in the body, which can cause plaque formation related to heart disease, she said, so dietitians recommend consuming foods and beverages that are rich in antioxidants. > There’s also the possibility that coffee drinkers tend to make healthier choices in general. They might opt for a cold brew or a cup of drip coffee instead of a less healthy source of caffeine, like an energy drink or soda, Dr. Goldberg added. “If you’re pounding Mountain Dew or Coca-Cola or Red Bull or all these other drinks, they have tons more sugar, all the artificial stuff — versus coffee, which is a generally unprocessed food.” (Side note: if someone else read this and started drinking coffee because of it, they'd probably be replacing an existing beverage choice as well. IOW, even if substitution effect was the cause or a contributing factor, people acting on the conclusions may still see the effect – and certainly would at public-health scale.)

baby 4y ago

As usual I will ask: could this mean that people who can stand coffee have stronger hearts? I can’t drink coffee because my heart will go crazy. Does that make me more at risk according to this study?

dcolkitt 4y ago
Similar studies have found that decaf coffee is associated with similar if not larger health gains.
- jacobsimon 4y ago
  Oh really? I’ll search for that but if you have the link please share
  - albertgoeswoof 4y ago
    The article in question states this
jacobsimon 4y ago
Yeah this is the main question everyone should be researching. Basically does caffeine (in)tolerance predict health issues.
somenameforme 4y ago
The latest word is that this is where the previous idea about a cup of wine a day being good for you came from (it's not). Studies pursuing this question generally did not sufficiently control for the fact that people regularly drinking alcohol are in a state of health where they can regularly drink alcohol. It's not as easy to control for as it sounds because somebody might defer for reasons tied to possible health issues, but without even knowing it. Instead, just like you're talking about here simply not liking how it makes them feel.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

RobertRoberts 4y ago

These studies are known for excluding unhealthy people, especially those with heart conditions. Edit: by "these studies", I mean caffeine, cigarettes/smoking, alcohol, coffee and generally any food or "health" study. If you don't know the exact make up of the test group, then I just assume it's rigged to get a certain result.

troydavis 4y ago
What is "These studies"? Are you referring to all studies? All observational studies? Something else? While I can't debate "These studies" without knowing what you're referring to, this specific study provides a clear explanation of the study cohort and there's no sign that anyone was excluded or otherwise cherry-picked.
- Blackcatmaxy 4y ago
  I know there were studies about eating organic food that at deeper levels of observation just mirror income inequality.
- RobertRoberts 4y ago
  I updated my comment, I realize I was definitely vague in my criticism. I've found that digging deeper into studies in the past that they would leave out people with heart conditions (specifically with caffeine studies) and not state that _anywhere_ in documentation. And this only came out from investigations.
stimpson_j_cat 4y ago
Does your general comment have to do with this specific study? They mention controlling for all the things you mentioned.
- RobertRoberts 4y ago
  Studies I've read in the past have claimed the same thing, yet still excluded people that would skew their results without reporting it. I have a friend who does statistical analysis for a living, and we have a game where he points out the flaws that are only obvious to those that know statistics and research well, and us laymen are oblivious. A medical doctor once told me "coffee must be good for you because I drink it!". It seems common that people just want science to agree with them, and they don't care how or why. I can't prove my point on this article (not enough time/energy/will) but I have watched health articles for years and you can go back to news sites and find this same exact study done over and over, reported in news organizations as if it's new every time. One stupid example, articles from just CNN going back to 2010 just on one page of search results: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=site%3Acnn.com+coffee+good+for+you&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=site%3Acnn.com+coffee+good+...

jb1991 4y ago

The interesting bit here is it seems even more beneficial to add a little sugar to your coffee. It doesn’t make much sense to me, considering all the negative news about sugar in general.

323 4y ago
Maybe adding sugar allows you to drink more coffee. Like how children medicine is sweetened to increase compliance.
Jaygles 4y ago
I wonder if the little bit of sugar kicks off some digestive processes that can bring in more of the beneficial things

goda90 4y ago

>There’s also the possibility that coffee drinkers tend to make healthier choices in general. They might opt for a cold brew or a cup of drip coffee instead of a less healthy source of caffeine, like an energy drink or soda, Dr. Goldberg added. “If you’re pounding Mountain Dew or Coca-Cola or Red Bull or all these other drinks, they have tons more sugar, all the artificial stuff — versus coffee, which is a generally unprocessed food.” It sounds like we need a study comparing people who rarely drink anything but water vs coffee drinking vs energy drink/soda drinking.

swozey 4y ago
Also I'm a no-coffee but energy drink (Bang usually) drinker and my energy drinks have either 0-3 grams of sugar... I drink water all day long, no sodas, etc. I'm sure 280 grams of caffeine can't be that great for me, of course.
- antihero 4y ago
  Better than 280 grams of cocaine though.
- ISL 4y ago
  280 grams would be very bad. 280 mg, substantially better :).
  - swozey 4y ago
    Haha, I thought grams sounded weird as I was typing it. Thanks!
- gigaflop 4y ago
  ~300mg all at once is a recipe for a bad time, for me. I'd rather drink 2 Monsters (0-cal, 140mg caff each) than 1 Bang, and space them out further. But I'll have a C4 once in a blue moon, if I plan to hit the gym very soon after.
- NoPicklez 4y ago
  Same with me, coffee drinker but also think sugar free energy drinks such as Red Bull and Bang.

papito 4y ago

A study described in the Dorito Effect took millions of grocery receipts and analyzed them. Turned out people who had wine in their carts also had an overall healthy selection of food at checkout. The customers who bought beer stuffed their carts with all kinds of junk. So there is that. So much for "a glass of wine a day is good for your heart".

elevaet 4y ago
Another well-documented problem with the "glass of wine good for your heart" studies was that the groups that didn't drink wine usually included teetotalers, who had likely already damaged their bodies in the past with alcohol abuse, and had since sworn off.

uhtred 4y ago

> Those who drank 1.5 to 3.5 cups of coffee per day, even with a teaspoon of sugar, were up to 30 percent less likely to die during the study period than those who didn’t drink coffee. Those who drank unsweetened coffee were 16 to 21 percent less likely to die during the study period Eh? So having sugar in the coffee was better than no sugar? am I reading this wrong?

ericmay 4y ago
Yea I thought that was worded a little confusingly as well, or at least my intuition is confusing me versus what was written. I also wonder if it's just increased consumption of water via coffee that is helpful here. They're saying it's not the caffeine so would it then just be the residue from the beans soaking in the water?
mikkergp 4y ago
This effect makes me very curious, because yeah I wouldn't think adding sugar would be better, but one effect could be that - if people are really only using a teaspoon of sugar, maybe people who are able to moderate the sugar intake in coffee are good at moderating diet in other ways as well? I drink black coffee, but, it's not that I'm being healthful, it's I like the dark strong flavor of coffee, and that desire for "strong flavors" means I don't always make the best health choices in other areas.
harry8 4y ago
If you've had health (&/or weight) issues it is common to adjust your diet, eg to cut out excess sugar. Making the switch to no sugar in coffee is pretty easy and likely to stick (even if doughnuts come back). If you've never had health issues you keep putting your teaspoon of sugar in your coffee and don't think about it. How do you adjust for that in the analysis?
- jjcon 4y ago
  They adjusted for clinical factors though so unless they were factors that were unknown to the respondents it shouldn't be that

alfiedotwtf 4y ago

Stands up in muscle pose: "I AM INVINCIBLE"

doctor_eval 4y ago
Came here to say the same thing. “I’M GONNA TO LIVE FOREVA!!!!!”

alexk307 4y ago

People can argue about the design of the study all they want, but 170k people followed over 7 years is enough evidence for me that drinking black coffee is beneficial to my health.

pigeonhole123 4y ago
A systemic problem in the study will not get better by running more data through it.
mikkergp 4y ago
The researchers themselves state they're not sure if coffee is good for you or it is indicative of other lifestyle factors.
- alexk307 4y ago
  Right, but it's highly correlated to drinking coffee. Enough for me to continue drinking my 2 cups of black coffee a day.

carbocation 4y ago

As someone who also heavily uses UK Biobank in my research, I would just encourage people to think about this effect size and ask whether it's plausible. If true, coffee has a more powerful effect on your risk of all-cause death than any drug for most diseases. It's wildly implausible. The results are confounded. There is no causal anchor. Having said that, coffee is great.

troydavis 4y ago
> There is no causal anchor. While it’s closer to speculation than science, past discussion of health benefits from coffee focused on antioxidants. Coffee, green and black tea, and cocoa have relatively high antioxidant content[1], particularly after adjusting for quantity consumed. I haven’t seen any breakdowns of how the average person ingests antioxidants, but it’s not like everyone eats 3 oz of blueberries a day :-) Beverages might be a major source. Again, this is pretty close to speculation, but it’s not nothing. [1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11453788/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11453788/ (a quick citation - IANA expert)
- 323 4y ago
  Note that there is a suspected link between anti-oxidants and cancer. The mechanism is pretty simple: oxidative stress is a warning system to the cell that initiates various repair mechanisms, up to apoptosis. Too much anti-oxidants suppress this warning system, thus allowing a damaged cell to go on. One paper, there are many: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30674247/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30674247/
- carbocation 4y ago
  Yours is perfectly fine speculation for a message board. I just think that the result is likely confounded, and there is no reason to reach for a biological mechanism when the study wasn't causal in the first place. I tend to think along the lines of `rsync: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31595857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31595857
323 4y ago
> a more powerful effect on your risk of all-cause death than any drug for most diseases But these people were mostly healthy. I'm sure that coffee doesn't work better compared to medicine if you are diseased,

dncornholio 4y ago

On another note, I always break sugar cubes in half and even a half is sometimes too much. I don't understand how people can drink coffee with 1 or even 2 cubes.

antiverse 4y ago

I drink anywhere between 0-5 cups of black coffee a day. By cup I mean a standard size coffee cup you'd find in any store. Sometimes I'll throw in a cappuccino (double espresso) because I'm feeling like having one. So far I've lived through studies telling me I will live shorter, and studies telling me I will live longer. There seems to be an unhealthy neurosis/anxiety built up around staving off death as long as possible - the number of articles on HN, companies started around longevity by people who are, to put it bluntly, scared shitless of dying, is disturbing. You can't lower your risk of dying. If enjoy a cup of coffee, then enjoy a damn cup of coffee regardless of what studies say.

afarviral 4y ago
Its not so much the dying for me, but losing out on some living because of some poor choices. Im always greatful for the scoop on how to live longer, and your prescription to just not worry about it and enjoy whatever would not work for me, as I'd take too many opiates, smoke, and stop exercising which would shorten and narrow my life.
krageon 4y ago
> You can't lower your risk of dying. Of course you can. Moderate exercise unambiguously makes this risk lower. Of course, even with much lower risk today you will eventually die. Perhaps this is what you meant.

jokoon 4y ago

so why doctors keep saying to drink less coffee? not to mention sleep problems...

Tagbert 4y ago
Not all doctors say that. Yes, if you are having sleep problems they might tell you to cut back on coffee and other caffeine sources. Some people are particularly sensitive to caffeine and get jitters and have trouble sleeping. Most people do not have this problem and as long as they don’t drink coffee late in the day, it does not cause sleep problems.
karaterobot 4y ago
I hadn't heard doctors (and by that I mean: researchers) saying to drink less coffee, except if it's causing sleep problems.
0daystock 4y ago
Most doctors receive inadequate nutrition training, if any, and are usually unqualified to speak about these topics.
xeromal 4y ago
Doctors aren't a monolith and I doubt all of them have read this study yet. I've found most sleep problems disappear if I stop drinking coffee before 3pm. YMMV. In college, I could drink coffee at 9pm with a bowl of icecream and it didn't hurt my sleep at all. lol

travisgriggs 4y ago

Curious how well they were able to control for economic factors. How are they not sure it’s not “People who can afford to buy lots of coffee can also afford other lifestyle ingredients that lead to longer life, relatively.” ? Latter Day Saints and Adventists don”t drink coffee, and yet they get to brag about better than average longevity too. But that too could just be a canary for economic indicators.

ekianjo 4y ago
> Latter Day Saints What's the reason not to drink coffee for them?
- travisgriggs 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_of_Wisdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_of_Wisdom

paskozdilar 4y ago

I've been a caffeine user for my whole life - started drinking energy drinks as a kid, took caffeine powder/pills in college for studying, drank a lot of coffee at work - and I've stopped about a month ago. I find that caffeine made me anxious, so much that all the energy wasn't even worth it anymore, as I couldn't focus on anything from anxiety. After stopping, my anxiety has went down so much that I feel I'm able to do much more work then before, even if I'm doing it slower, because I can just relax and focus on what I need to do, without being distracted by every single intrusive thought I have and without the crash that inevitably comes every day after caffeine wears off. I don't care about "health benefits" of coffee, to be honest. Caffeine is a crappy drug (for me), so nowdays I only save it for situations where I have to stay awake for longer than I usually can.

neves 4y ago
The study result isn't about caffeine and dying, but about coffee and dying. There's a lot of substances in coffee beyond caffeine.
smachiz 4y ago
This sounds like you were on the very extreme end of caffeine consumption...
- paskozdilar 4y ago
  In college, yes. I've always had issues with focus, and first year of college was overwhelming. I cut out all unnecessary time sinks, and I've found that I lack enough "focus" in a day - at some point I'd just read, but be unable to engage with any words I'm reading. Caffeine pills helped me study for longer, however, the tolerance made me take more and more until at some point I was taking up to 2000mg of caffeine a day. I was barely functioning from anxiety, but I managed to be amongst better students on my year. At work we have an espresso machine, so it's very easy to just "grab a cup" when I feel tired while working on an important task. It wasn't strange for me to drink 5-6 cups per day. Nowdays, I'm only drinking coffee if it's a social event, and I keep a hard limit of one cup per day.
4y ago

zwieback 4y ago

Bummer, I'm in my fifties now and used to love coffee but now I just don't really enjoy it that much. Mostly switched to tea, is there a study that tea is even better?

rsync 4y ago

Alternative interpretation: neither the coffee nor the caffeine is helpful. Instead, coffee consumption is so pervasive that coffee drinkers are “normal” and many people that don’t consume coffee do so because it’s actually hurtful or uncomfortable … and that likely correlates to other weaknesses. The same interpretation should be considered for all of those moderate drinking studies… I am quite certain nobody is getting a health benefit from alcohol.

nabla9 4y ago
> all of those moderate drinking studies… I am quite certain nobody is getting a health benefit from alcohol. The effect where moderate alcohol use is beneficial have disappeared after better studies. It didn't prevent it from becoming "common wisdom".
- mrits 4y ago
  I'm still on a small glass of wine with my meal diet. I'm also a big fan of 6-7 meals a day.
  - tragictrash 4y ago
    Does this mean you consume 6-7 small glasses of wine a day?
    - yunohn 4y ago
      Yes, and I think they were just being sarcastic.
    - xeromal 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
danschumann 4y ago
So the correlation is like a societal strength test of worthiness?

keybored 4y ago

The culture around me is to drink black coffee or lattes. No added sugar or cream. Most people in my office space who seem to drink coffee as their hot beverage of choice. There’s not a lot of chatter about coffee being healthy or unhealthy. The only unhealthy thing that people tend to want to avoid is being unable to sleep due to drinking too much of it or too late. Another cultural thing is to joke about the first cup of joe being mandatory if you want to wake up properly (at the office). In that light it makes sense to not really consider whether it is healthy or unhealthy; it’s as if your body needs it anyway so you either gotta get it or sleepwalk through the day.

PaulHoule 4y ago
Caffeine is habit forming. If you're in the place where you "have to" have a cup of coffee every morning just to feel OK you can probably get over it after about two weeks of abstinence. Probably the hardest time is the second day.
- thirtyfivecent 4y ago
  Habit forming? This is obviously a physical dependence like any other drug. There are thousands of case reports on /r/decaf outlining a recovery period of months and years with horrible side effects like anhedonia, panic attacks, sleep issues, brain fog, cramping. The hardest day is day 2?? You honestly believe that is sufficient payback for the years of being buzzed up and artificially interested in boring and pointless office work by drinking this poison?
  - graeme 4y ago
    Really? I read that sub. Recall consensus there was a couple of weeks based on half life. I did it, really sucked, but then total improvement.
    - thirtyfivecent 4y ago
      3 of the top 5 posts of all time on that subreddit as an example are speaking in terms of "915 days caffiene free", "2.5 years caffee free" .. etc. These are the most dramatic and interesting stories shared there but the people there are obviously interested in long term case studies and these stories are popular for a reason. Nobody cares about "2 weeks" there everyone quickly realises this is a long slog to getting back to normal of months and years.

steviedotboston 4y ago

I dunno, call me skeptical but I think everyone has a 100% risk of dying.

phabricator 4y ago
lel this comment is 2 zany 4 me XD
carapace 4y ago
I had the same thought. "Coffee is the Fountain of Youth" is not what they meant, eh? :) (Although I often joke that you can actually see me turn from a zombie into a live human being with that first sip in the morning.)

bell-cot 4y ago

Quick Theory: The regular coffee drinkers are (on average) folks with more energy/time/money (which keeping up a coffee habit requires), or working (free & convenient coffee at the office), or other things that correlate with better physical & mental health.

stimpson_j_cat 4y ago
yes, this is mentioned in the article > there may be other lifestyle factors contributing to that lower mortality risk among people who drink coffee, like a healthy diet or a consistent exercise routine
yourusername 4y ago
Coffee is dirt cheap. A kilo of coffee is around €8 and you can make ~16 liters or 80 cups with that.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  That must be for people who hate coffee, or hate themselves, or both. Even the cheapest grocery store brand ground coffee that comes in buckets sells for $0.4/oz which is about twice the price you mentioned. Anything worth drinking costs $1/oz where I live.

rhacker 4y ago

A lot of people that don't drink coffee have heart issues. Even ones that don't know they have those kinds of issues don't drink coffee because it makes them feel bad. It's typically the heart doing uncomfortable things for them. And since they already have heart issues - ding ding ding. Correlation. It's not that coffee is making people healthier, it's just a substance that is addictive that people that don't have heart issues drink.

chris_j 4y ago
What is it that makes people with heart issues feel bad when they drink coffee?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

layer8 4y ago

Even if a real causal relation between coffee consumption and longevity was proved, I feel that the benefit of that finding would be limited as long as the actual mechanism isn’t understood. Few people who don’t like drinking coffee will start drinking it because of that, and those who like coffee drink it anyway (they’ll just feel even better doing so, maybe).

karmakaze 4y ago

I drink coffee because it became part of my routine, then I got to enjoy it, and now it helps me focus while working. One aspect I notice from my caffeine intake is that it helps me deal with stuff in general--nothing stresses me out. The downside is that I also feel positive things less as well, so I try to limit it to morning/mid-afternoon of weekdays. I can certainly see in my case living a life with less stress promoting longevity but with less richness of experience.

neonate 4y ago

https://archive.ph/L5k9P https://archive.ph/L5k9P

orblivion 4y ago

Hopefully it compensates for my increased mortality risk from beer.

softwaredoug 4y ago

A plausible theory is people who CANT drink coffee, or dont drink as much, have health issues that often prevent them from drinking coffee...

tarentel 4y ago
The article specifically says there were benefits to people who drink decaffeinated and caffeinated alike.
- rhacker 4y ago
  There is still caffeine in decaf. Enough that my heart issue brother can't drink that either.
  - nomel 4y ago
    According to a quick search, ~2mg vs ~100mg.
    - thih9 4y ago
      I’ve heard that sometimes ordering decaf will get you a caffeinated drink and that a lot of places disregard or don’t pay enough attention to that particular request. I have no source or any numbers though.
      - hawk_ 4y ago
        That's why I always order instant decaf so I can look at the packet before dissolving it.
        rhacker 4y ago
        That's a smart thing to do - just ask for hot water at starbucks (if you're out of the house of course) and slip in a decaf tube. It would probably be free.
    - 4y ago

guerrilla 4y ago

How many times has this been replicated? We should probably just flag science posts that haven't been at this point.

Johnny555 4y ago

Those who drank 1.5 to 3.5 cups of coffee per day, even with a teaspoon of sugar, were up to 30 percent less likely to die during the study period than those who didn’t drink coffee. I wish coffee studies would report results in ounces (or better, ml) instead of ambiguous "cups" The Coffee industry uses 6 ounce cups, the USA standard "cup" is 8 ounces, and the imperial cup is 10 ounces (the study was based on UK data). I drink around 12 oz of coffee a day and I drink it out of a single large coffee cup, is that 1 cup, 2 cups, 1.5 cups, or 1.2 cups?

bufferout 4y ago
A lot of the world drinks espresso. Mg of caffeine probably the appropriate measure here?
- stubish 4y ago
  It is a study on self reported data. They won't know how strong the coffee was, or even the size of the cup. Or if the teaspoons of sugar were heaped or flat.
- krageon 4y ago
  It is not, because the study also looked at decaffeinated coffee.

danw1979 4y ago

I’ll have a guess at the causation here: more coffee consumed => better code written => higher income => higher standard of living, correlated with better health outcomes.

arisAlexis 4y ago

Amen

pazimzadeh 4y ago

What if people who drink coffee get more done, people who get more done are more fulfilled, and people who are more fulfilled live longer? Edit: doesn't explain that the effect also worked with decaf. Maybe coffee contains other compounds and secondary metabolites which have health benefits

carlgreene 4y ago

> The mortality risk remained lower for people who drank both decaffeinated and caffeinated coffee. Very interesting! I've seen this conclusion many times in the past decade+ but have yet for someone to call out the aspect of caffeine. I wouldn't suspect caffeine to result in lower mortality risk, but you never know

stubish 4y ago
I forget the details, but a different study in recent years found that decaf and caffeinated did have different links. IIRC it was measuring both cancer rates and heart disease, and found positive correlation with both reduced for caffeinated coffee but only one for decaffeinated. And years before that, a study that found positive correlations with caffeinated coffee, but not straight caffeine, and not decaffeinated coffee, which indicated some sort of interaction with the coffee compounds and the caffeine in particular (very fuzzy on this one).

leonroy 4y ago

I wonder if it's because coffee as an appetite suppressant causes colorific reduction in people - effectively, they eat less. Fasting has recently been proven to also lower mortality risk by a large amount. > Coffee suppresses your appetite because it contains chlorogenic acids which are a type of phytochemical compounds that help control hunger pangs and suppress your appetite. Because of this, you don’t need to drink caffeinated coffee to integrate it into your weight loss program; decaffeinated coffee will do just fine. Source for the quote: https://energeticlifestyle.com/how-to-use-coffee-as-an-appetite-suppressant/ https://energeticlifestyle.com/how-to-use-coffee-as-an-appet... Pubmed source which corroborates coffee as an appetite suppressant: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6683100/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6683100/

ip26 4y ago
I can’t be the only one who thinks, I’m getting hungry but I don’t have time to eat - maybe I’ll have another cup instead.

resters 4y ago

Does instant coffee count?

hereforphone 4y ago

Mortality risk remains 100%.

11thEarlOfMar 4y ago

What are the differences in Cause of Death between the coffee and non-coffee drinkers? For example, are coffee drinkers less likely to die in a crash commuting to work in the morning? Or less likely to die from stroke?

floxy 4y ago
Yes. The claim is that all-cause mortality decreased. So coffee makes it less likely that you died from stroke, heart disease, cancer, infectious disease, Alzheimer's, car accidents, drowning, drug overdoses, natural disasters, suicide, etc..

slymon99 4y ago

Another nutritional epidemiology study with an absurdly large effect size that is almost certainly due to confounding factors. Yes, the researchers did an admirable job trying to control for confounders. Doesn't matter. Confounding factors for health are impossible to adjust for, whether it's healthy user bias or nutritional choices or a million other possible factors. There's just no way to take this sort of causality seriously when humans are living infinitely complex lives. Stop wasting money and do an RCT. Also, traditional media is still embarrassingly bad at communicating correlation vs causation. How does this get past a science editorial board.

beebmam 4y ago
That's why RCTs are the gold standard. You can test nearly exactly the effect of an intervention.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  Meta analyses > RCTs
  - raffraffraff 4y ago
    Yes, but go to the Cochrane library and try to get sensible analysis on anything that doesn't have a few RCTs under its belt, and Cochrane just shrugs.
- vintermann 4y ago
  You can't do RCTs on something as common as coffee consumption. What you can do is mendelian randomization studies. There are genes which influence bitter taste which seem like obvious candidates: If coffee tastes like pure quinine to you, you're probably drinking less of it than you otherwise would. A quick search shows that there have been M.R. studies on coffee, and they do suggest the relationships between coffee drinking and various good health outcomes aren't causal, just like the ones on alcohol. At this point, we should be suspicious of any "U-shaped" effect curves of extremely common and popular habits.

RobertRoberts 4y ago

Be very critical of health studies. A comment of mine got flagged because I think I hit a nerve. Here's CNN saying coffee is good for you as if it's a new idea since 2010 on one page of search results alone, https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Acnn.com+coffee+good+for+you https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Acnn.com+coffee+good+for+you Here's Fox News saying the same thing: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%253Afoxnews.com+coffee+good+for+you https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%253Afoxnews.com+coffee+good+f...

LAC-Tech 4y ago

I've cut down coffee intake by a lot, but still have a little bit. For those of you that have quit completely - does the roller coaster stop? By that I mean... you have caffeine, feel productive, caffeine wears off, you feel unproductive, rinse and repeat. Are you over all more productive or do the peaks and valleys just average out into nothing?

krageon 4y ago
I have a weird habit of quitting for 6-12 months and then resuming drinking it. I've done so twice now (once when I was a bit younger, and the second time recently) and my impression is that overall everything is better when I do drink it. It tastes nice, the effects are nice and if you don't overdo it (i.e. increase your consumption above a normal threshold, like a small cup per day) it stays pretty nice forever. But this is just the case for me - I've heard plenty of people say that without coffee their life is better on average (more focus on average throughout the day). tl;dr: Overall more productive. It's also more pleasurable.

brokenkebab2 4y ago

I'm somewhat puzzled by the "lower mortality risk" used without time constraints. Don't we all have 100% mortality risk?

0daystock 4y ago

> Primary Funding Source: > National Natural Science Foundation of China China's scientific credibility went out with the window when they lied about spreading a weaponized virus a few years back.

WalterGR 4y ago
What forum directed you to come to HN? Is keybase involved in some way?
- 0daystock 4y ago
  Don't think so, I've been lurking for well over 10 years.

topicseed 4y ago

> Conclusion: Moderate consumption of unsweetened and sugar-sweetened coffee was associated with lower risk for death.

harveywi 4y ago

This is an interesting study. As someone who only drinks sweetened coffee, I will start stirring in some unsweetened coffee in order to get the health benefits.

digikata 4y ago
The sweet spot would seem to be for you to drink two cups a day.
- outworlder 4y ago
  The unsweet spot, I guess?
  - digikata 4y ago
    Perhaps I'm reading the summary of numbers wrong, but it looks like at 1.5-2.5 cups a day, the hazard ratio was 0.69 for sweetened coffee drinkers vs 0.71 for unsweetened coffee at 2.5-4.5 cups a day. With confidence intervals on those, about the same even if the number of cups is different, but odd that 1.5-2.5 cups per day unsweetened comes out worse than sweetened.

yawz 4y ago

I drink mostly decaf. I’m glad that the same benefits apply to decaf.

capitainenemo 4y ago
Hm... it says "also observed" doesn't say necessarily at same levels. Decaf after all has some caffeine in it.
- capitainenemo 4y ago
  Hm, well actually, since someone posted the PDF above, seems you're right. Decaf did quite well (although perhaps noisier due to smaller sample size). I do wonder about some of those error bars and controls though. For example artificially sweetened coffee decaffinated at 1.5-2.5 cups per day seems to have a higher rate of death (1.11) - but artifically sweetened decaffinated at 3.5-4.5 cups has half the rate of death (0.52). By contrast black decaf at 3.5-4.5 per day does worse than that (0.66). Anyway, if there's any significance to this, you're right that caffeine does not seem to play into it much in their stats.

franciscop 4y ago

I'm bad at reading scientific papers, could someone clarify this please? It says in the results: > Compared with nonconsumers, consumers of various amounts of unsweetened coffee (>0 to 1.5, >1.5 to 2.5, >2.5 to 3.5, >3.5 to 4.5, and >4.5 drinks/d) had lower risks for all-cause mortality after adjustment for lifestyle, sociodemographic, and clinical factors, with respective hazard ratios of 0.79 (95% CI, 0.70 to 0.90), 0.84 (CI, 0.74 to 0.95), 0.71 (CI, 0.62 to 0.82), 0.71 (CI, 0.60 to 0.84), and 0.77 (CI, 0.65 to 0.91); the respective estimates for consumption of sugar-sweetened coffee were 0.91 (CI, 0.78 to 1.07), 0.69 (CI, 0.57 to 0.84), 0.72 (CI, 0.57 to 0.91), 0.79 (CI, 0.60 to 1.06), and 1.05 (CI, 0.82 to 1.36). It explicitly says that the all-cause mortality for unsweetened coffee was lower, that's pretty clear. But then it just gives (Confidence Interval?) numbers for "the respective estimates for consumption of sugar-sweetened coffee" but doesn't say if it lowers all-cause mortality, is that implied as well? Or are those numbers just confidence intervals without giving an assessment?

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
The hazard ratio being <1 means that mortality was lower.
- franciscop 4y ago
  I see, thanks! So those are the hazard ratios for each of the segments of consumption of coffee, right? (5 coffee drinking segments, 5 hazard ratios)
  - cheald 4y ago
    Correct, ">3.5 to 4.5" / "0.71 (CI, 0.60 to 0.84)" means "we're 95% confident that people who had 3.5 to 4.5 unsweetened coffees per day had 60-84% the risk of mortality of baseline (average 71%)".
    - tawktiem 4y ago
      Ohhhhh, thank you! That makes sense. It seems there was an implicit assumption of 95% (p<0.05), is that right?

kkfx 4y ago

Not to criticize but... I've read so many (abstract of) studies on coffee and tea with such marginal conclusion on all sides that I'm pretty convinced the real state of thing is: at normal consumption level they are nor good nor bad. That's is.

AdmiralAsshat 4y ago

Couple thoughts/ideas for further research: - Is sweetened coffee also adding creamer? I don't know of many people who take coffee with sugar but no cream. They usually go together. - Were coffee preparation methods at all considered? I don't know if everyone in the trial was being served the same coffee or if respondents prepared coffee in whatever manner they liked and just reported how much coffee/how sweet they made it. Different methods may require more or less sweetner, so the guy who takes it black might be e.g. doing a Chemex/pourover, while the guy doing cream and sugar might be going through a standard drip. A third might be doing a French Press. The extractions from those methods will be wildly different.

bena 4y ago
I've seen it all. Black. Sugar, no cream. Cream, no sugar. I think your observations may be more influenced by who you know.
- bestouff 4y ago
  I mostly see people taking coffee without cream. Sugar or no sugar is very roughly a 50/50 affair.
  - mirekrusin 4y ago
    My poison is coffee with frothed oat milk (oat milks are so good nowadays), no need for extra sugar. 2nd one black - pure or with one drop of la perruche sugar cube - depending on the mood.
dwringer 4y ago
Cuban coffee is made with (a lot of) sugar but no cream. Granted that might not make up a big percentage of the study group if it's from the UK.
- justinlloyd 4y ago
  I do not know if coffee habits in the UK have changed in the past 25 years since I lived there, and I fully expect that they have with the rise of Starbucks and other "gourmet" coffee chains, but a lot of UK coffee consumption was instant coffee granules, at least during the 1980's and 1990's. That would be an interesting piece of data to observe, what kind of coffee were these people drinking? Instant? Ground? Pods?

criddell 4y ago

What could this mean: > The association between artificially sweetened coffee and mortality was less consistent. Also, is unsweetened coffee black coffee, or could it be coffee + some type of creamer? I’m assuming it must be the latter because if they meant black coffee they would have said that.

lvass 4y ago
I'm looking for clarification on that as well. >I’m assuming it must be the latter because if they meant black coffee they would have said that. The authors seem to have Chinese names, a country with extremely low dairy consumption, so I wouldn't assume that. I'm from south america and never seen a coffee with creamer, had to look up what that means.
- criddell 4y ago
  > I'm from south america and never seen a coffee with creamer, had to look up what that means. I didn’t know what else to call it. It’s typically dairy or a dairy substitute but I’m also thinking of things like steamed milk in a latte, flat white, or cappuccino (those are global, no?).

teslabox 4y ago

I didn't take up coffee drinking until my late-20's. At first I took my coffee black, then I read how caffeine boosts the metabolism. This draws down sugar from the blood. To avoid a cortisol response, it's best to complement the caffeine in coffee with sugar. This study seems to confirm that fake sugar is harmful. I have family who drink fake-sugar cola products - these don't help their weight. I've seen one person fall apart 'mentally' within 1/2 hour of drinking an electrolyte beverage made with sucralose and other fake sugar. Ideally glucose is consumed with potassium, to avoid insulin release: milk, orange juice, potatoes, etc... Fructose does not stimulate the release of insulin.

vorpalhex 4y ago
> This draws down sugar from the blood. To avoid a cortisol response.. I mean, so does running, swimming, watching an exciting movie.. > This study seems to confirm that fake sugar is harmful. This study confirms no such thing. > have family who drink fake-sugar cola products - these don't help their weight. Yes but (probably) not because the fake sugar but because their palette is too sweet focused. You need dietary change to lose weight. > I've seen one person fall apart 'mentally' within 1/2 hour of drinking an electrolyte beverage made with sucralose and other fake sugar. I've seen someone have a heart attack after crossing paths with a black cat. I don't think it was the cats fault.
robonerd 4y ago
"electrolyte beverages", e.g. gatorade, are generally not caffeinated. Why would somebody fall apart after drinking one without sugar? It's basically just water with food coloring and a bit of sodium and potassium. Also, I've been taking caffeine pills for the better part of a decade, often on an empty stomach. There's no crash from the absence of sugar, the only sort of crash I get occurs a few days after each time I try to quit the stuff.
- outworlder 4y ago
  > Why would somebody fall apart after drinking one without sugar Probably dehydrated and whatever hydration they did get wasn't sufficient.

em500 4y ago

The full text pdf is gated, but it's probably indentical to this one: https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/documents/16093/Sweetened%20and%20Unsweetened%20Coffee.pdf https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/documents/16093/Sweetened%20...

AlgorithmicTime 4y ago

zetazzed 4y ago

Crazy to see that Annals of Internal Medicine prominently highlights "metrics" for the article including "Picked up by 215 news outlets." Are academics supposed to be like Buzzfeed writers now, chasing media instead of peer citations or lasting impact in practice?

barefeg 4y ago

How do they discard confounding variables? Is there any causal link between how people drink coffee and mortality, or is this just a correlation?

Udo 4y ago
> How do they discard confounding variables? I don't think they do. Which is much better than correcting for variables and doing it badly. Anecdotally, I am the only healthy person I know of in my group who voluntarily uses artificial sweetener. It seems to me that the use of artificial sweetener is strongly associated with health problems such as morbid obesity and diabetes: people who don't have to don't use them. Regarding artificial sweetener itself being causal there is very little reliable data to support that. There does seem to be a link between Aspartame and (bladder) cancer but it has so far only been shown in animal models.
- outworlder 4y ago
  > It seems to me that the use of artificial sweetener is strongly associated with health problems such as morbid obesity and diabetes Yeah. Cause and effect seems to be reversed here. I started using sweeteners because of my coffee consumption and watching the effect it was having on teeth. Later on cut the sweeteners completely, just because they don't taste as good as actual sugar, so why bother. I don't think most are as bad as some people believe. A lot of it has probably to do with the notion that they are 'artificial'. Well, no more so than pure sugar. Go chew on some sugar cane if you want something more "natural" :) Even that must be done in moderation.
- diamondlovesyou 4y ago
  Artificial sweeteners don't taste like sugar, at least none that I've tried. They're sweet, but it ain't sugar.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

cpurdy 4y ago

I'm invincible!