7 ms·
More Consensus on Coffee’s Benefits Than You Might Think
- mariusz79 11y agoIt's a drug. It's full of harmful chemicals because of the way it's processed. It affects mind and body, often negatively. But it's great money maker so we will be hearing more about its "benefits" in a near future.
- Kurtz79 11y agoAlso tobacco and alcohol are big moneymakers, but there is a large consensus about their negative effects, and that's why their use (or abuse) is discouraged, by doctors and governments alike. So either: - The coffee "lobby" is more effective than the tobacco and alcohol lobbies. - Maybe all drugs cannot be dumped in the same bin, and we should treat them case by case, critically.
- erikb 11y agoThe consensus wasn't always focussed on tobaccos/alcohols disadvantages though. If you watch movies about the US's 60s you'll see doctors advising their patients to smoke more.
- Turing_Machine 11y agoHmmm... seems like I see a new story about the purported health benefits of red wine every few months or so.
- dghughes 11y agoFun fact smokers process/eliminate caffeine from their bodies quicker than non-smokers.
- ci5er 11y agoThis is true. Blood serum caffeine is processed twice as quickly by smokers. LPT: If you quit smoking, cut your caffeine consumption in at least half for at least the first week. Otherwise you will explode with non-nicotine-related episodes of anxiety or nervousness.
- cp9 11y agoyou're treating "chemical" as a four letter word
- happyscrappy 11y agoTo quote RZA watching Bill Murray drink straight from the pot- "Coffee causes serious delirium."
- drcube 11y agoWhat harmful chemicals are those, exactly?
- a3n 11y agoSurprisingly few. I would have expected anything arriving in US stores at an industrial level would have suffered from industrial levels of processing and storage-related chemicals, but a quick skim of wikipedia reveals essentially none. Huh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_production Ethyl acetate is sometimes used in decaffeination. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decaffeination#Solvents_used_in_decaffeination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decaffeination#Solvents_used_i...
- mariusz79 11y agoTrichloroethylene, acrylamide, and many more including pesticides like Aldrin, Dieldrin, Chlordane and Heptachlor.
- snissn 11y ago> It's full of harmful chemicals because of the way it's processed. Like which chemicals?
- Turing_Machine 11y agoDihydrogen monoxide, for one. :-)
- mgav 11y agoThat looked serious, but the smile at the end of your comment made me curious enough to look it up and learn it's H2O. Nice one - you got me!
- pennaMan 11y agoDo you have any evidence for your claims?
- MrJagil 11y agoCoffee itself might not have anything to do with it; rather, coffee follows a certain lifestyle which is healthier than that of non-drinkers. I.e. it is perhaps quite good for you to get up every morning at 9am and go to work. Active lifestyle, continuous stimuli etc. Coffee just so happens to be very ingrained in that culture. It might not be the actual chemicals and nutrients of coffee that helps you, but the fact that it "forces" you to be active, mentally. It kickstarts your brain. The biggest killers are staying still and loneliness.
- sageabilly 11y agoThat's my thought too. Is it the coffee itself or is it the lifestyle that goes along with drinking five cups of coffee a day? I'm pretty sure that no one is drinking five or six cups of coffee a day and just sitting on the couch and watching TV.
- erikb 11y agoI'd argue that coffee is connected to a rather unhealthy lifestyle of sitting in an office chair the whole day, eating unhealthy fast-/restaurant food instead of cooking for yourself, working long hours instead of a regular 7 to 5 schedule etc.
- mseebach 11y agoI'd argue that you're both middle-browing the f* out of an article that actually quotes several actual scientific studies.
- erikb 11y agoI love the term middle-browing. Both comments weren't about the immediate effects of coffee, though, but about their indirect benefits. At least I didn't want to say anything about the immediate facts at all. The position of the article and its beautiful quotes is kept virginly untouched.
- jwcooper 11y agoCoffee is ingrained into the culture of many professions, far beyond just office jobs. Nursing, landscaping, utility work, construction, you name it...it's a great way to kickstart the body when having to get up at 5am or, stay awake during an overnight shift serving tables at a restaurant.
- anu7df 11y agoThis is all well and good. I drink my locally roasted, manual ground, aeropress brewed coffee for pleasure and taste. Everything else.. meh.. Actually most/all coffee lovers I know drink coffee because they like it, not because they expect a lot of health benefits from it. But... good to know..
- Diederich 11y agoFor some people with GERD, coffee is very bad for them. My wife switched from coffee to tea for this reason. Tea is pretty fabulous for her, and I gather there's at least some documented health benefits on that front as well. Edit: GERD = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastroesophageal_reflux_disease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastroesophageal_reflux_disease Second Edit: To be clear: I agree with the parent article, I think coffee is close to harmless for MOST people, and very well might have some positives.
- matwood 11y agoTea is awesome. It has the caffeine, but has another drug which is more calming. For people who get a bit manic with coffee, tea is often the thing that works for them.
- YorkianTones 11y agoL-Theanine one of those other drugs found in green/black/white tea, and it produces a calming effect. The Japanese even put it in bubble gum.
- bkmartin 11y agoThis is very true. I have LPR (not GERD, but often mistaken for it) and reducing coffee consumption to reduce stomach acid production is the driver here. Tea can, I'm sure have benefits... but what kind of tea? You can make "Tea" out of anything. Coffee is very specific, Tea is way to general. You would have to study so many specific types of tea to see where and how much benefits exists.
- marvel_boy 11y agoGERD?
- jklein11 11y agocommonly known as acid reflux
- kohanz 11y agoAnyone else surprised that 3 to 5 cups a day is considered "moderate"? I thought it would be 1 to 3 or so.
- 3JPLW 11y agoIn the US, at least, there's a strange convention that a "cup" of coffee is 6 ounces[1]. 2 mugs is typically about 4 of these "cups". I'm not sure what convention the NY Times is using, but the quantities are quite muddled. 1. http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/25041/is-a-cup-on-a-coffee-maker-always-6-oz-is-this-a-standard-in-the-us http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/25041/is-a-cup-on...
- globuous 11y agoI always hated that "cup" measure in the US... Anywho, I don't think the volume of coffee one drinks in a day is relevant without stating how concentrated it is. I'm assuming 6 oz of americano coffee doesn't have quite the same effect as a 6 oz cup of esspresso (oh Lord.) I know that, technically, a glass of beer should contain the same amount of alcohol as a shot of vodka or a glass of wine in a bar. Of course in practice it's probably not exactly the case, but when someone tells me "drinking 2 glasses before driving isn't such a good idea," I'm supposed to be able to tell how much 2 glasses is regadless of the alcohol consumed. Isn't it the same in the article ? Shouldn't a cup of esspresso contain the same amount of coffee as a (medium ?) americano ? If not, how do these 2 coffee dilutions compare ?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- cdcarter 11y agoHe was saying that one beer (standard American longneck bottle holds 12oz) contains ~about~ as much as a shot of vodka (standard jigger shot is 1.5oz) which contains about as much as a glass of wine (5-6oz pours are standard at US restaurants).
- mironathetin 11y agoWithout the information who financed these numerous research results, they are not worth the time to read them or to write about them, imho.
- chatwinra 11y agoYou have to view it at an individual study/paper level (ie: go to the link and pdf via the article). They have to declare sources of funding in the papers, so you can trace funding origins and conflicts of interests from those declarations in each study. The article itself does a nice job of linking to every necessary study - sometimes they don't bother and then you do start to get worried about how much of the content is accurate.
- josefresco 11y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
- recuter 11y agoNo, that would be calling out the author by name as a shill. Remarking that the source the author is relying upon could possibly be biased/tainted is not an ad hominem in any way.
- kenbellows 11y agoIt could be considered an ad hominem attack on a study if OP had said "the source was funded by coffee sellers and therefore it's all false and incorrect". But that's not what's happening here anyway.
- josefresco 11y agoThe OP is "implying" that based on who funded the research, this may be truthful. So while the claim was not made outright, it was insinuated.
- 11y ago
- Lancey 11y agoRemember when moderate consumption of alcohol also reduced cardiovascular risk?
- leephillips 11y agoYes. Doesn't it still?
- Lancey 11y agoNo, it was debunked.
- leephillips 11y agoI remember that doubts were raised about some of the studies, but not that it was definitively debunked. Do you have a reference by any chance? I'm not doubting you and realize that I can Google, but if you have a good paper I'll start there.
- pmelendez 11y agoAccording to Wikipedia references it doesn't seem to be debunked at all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_cardiovascular_disease#Debate_over_research_methods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_cardiovascular_dise...
- Speakeasys 11y agoThis article brought to you by Starbucks. The great tasting and dependable coffee you love.
- stephengillie 11y agoIt's fun to watch the health pendulum swing to and fro, and occasionally given a gentle shove from a marketing article. Replace coffee with cigarettes, and it reads as a tobacco ad from the 1920s.
- INTPnerd 11y agoThis article is completely worthless because it is all about looking at studies about drinking coffee. If you really want to get educated about health, you need to learn the details of taking care of your entire person, how all your body parts are interdependent and affect each other, and what different habits actually do. Instead of looking at whether or not long term it lowers or raises your risk of certain problems, it would be better task these questions: What is coffee? What are the immediate affects of drinking it on different body organs and functions? What is the purpose of those organs and is that purpose disrupted? How does it affect digestion? It is well known among those that actually know stuff about health, that taking care of your digestive process and things that affect your bowel movements is where the root of most disease and healing begins. So how does coffee affect this? According to the book "Tissue Cleansing Through Bowel Management", coffee will kill the good bacteria necessary for this faster than anything else. If that is true, it makes a strong case toward coffee being bad for you. Of course not all coffee is created equal. Some coffee is naturally less acidic than others. A lot of coffee is polluted with high levels of heavy metals. But if coffee is generally bad for digestion, and digestion is one of the main keys to healthy living, why do so many studies show long term benefits from drinking it? Here is where I don't like studies for this kind of thing. Most people come nowhere near living in harmony with what is now known about healthy living, myself included. So these studies are mostly about the affects of coffee on people who otherwise do not live a healthy lifestyle. Also, who funded, setup, monitored, and published the results? Who gamed the system by deciding who be included in the study and what type of coffee they would use? Who was paid off to change the numbers? There is no way to know. And yes, I drink coffee, at least for now. But I am on a constant journey of always improving my health in some way. Some day, I may stop drinking coffee altogether.
- TheLoneWolfling 11y agoA thought. Coffee is a (relatively mild) stimulant. I wonder how much of coffee's benefits can be attributed directly to that, as opposed to whatever else caffeine may do? Given that these studies tend to be done in first-world countries, where obesity and people being underactive are a problem... Overgeneralizing of course. If nothing else, sitting still for long periods of time is known to be bad for you, and caffeine helps people avoid that.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]