Health….! Americans certainly love coffee. Even when the pandemic shut down in last spring, almost every district shop that sold coffee got caught was able to remain open and I was surprised how numerous people went about their stay with a favourite shop-maker.
One elderly friend who had travelled by subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan had arranged to have delivered her preferred mixture of ground coffee. “The added cost is well worth it,” she said.
I used machine brewing pod coffee, and I stored up in a year’s supply of the mixture I liked last summer when it appeared reasonably safe for me to shop. We should all be glad to know that everything we needed to make sure that Joe’s favourite cup helped us keep healthy.
The most recent evaluations are truly reassuring for the health effects of coffee and caffeine, its principal active ingredient. Their intake has been associated with a lower risk of any type of illness, including heart disease, type-2 diabetes, gallstones, depressions, suicides, cirrhosis, liver cancer, melanoma and prostate cancer.
In many studies worldwide, a reduction in death rates was in fact associated with eight or four-ounce cups of coffee (or about 400 mg caffeine) daily.
Those who drank three to five cups of coffee each day with or without caffeine were 15 per cent less likely to die of any cause in a study with more than 200,000 participants during up to 30 years compared with those who shunned coffee.
The risk of suicide among men and women who were moderate coffee-drinkers was perhaps the most dramatic reduction by 50%, perhaps by boosting production of brain chemical substances that are antidepressant.
As the Harvard School of Public Health research team reported last summer, while current evidence could not justify the use of coffee or caffeine to prevent diseases, most people drink coffee in moderation.
It’s not always been like that. I have experienced sporadic warnings over decades that coffee can be a health risk. In the course of many years coffee has been considered to be the cause of diseases like cardiovascular, stroke, type 2 diabetes, pancreatic cancer, anxiety disorder, food deficiencies, gastric reflux, migraine, insomnia and early death. In 1991 coffee was identified as a possible carcinogen by the World Health Organization.
In some of the now dissatisfied studies, smoking was responsible for the alleged risk, not coffee beverages (the two often went hand in hand). Dr Dr Walter C. Willett, nutrition professor, told the public, “These periodic fears have given the public a highly distorted perspective.”
“In total, coffee is remarkably safe and has a number of significant potential benefits despite various concerns arising over the years,” he said. None of this means that coffee is beneficial no matter how prepared it is.
In the form of an oily chemicals known as diterpenes, the Norwegian boiled coffee, espresso and Turkish coffee, brewed without a paper filter, which can increase artery-damaging LDL cholesterol.
In both filtered and instant coffee, however, these chemicals are practically absent. I have dissected a caffeine pod and found the paper filter lining the plastic cup, because I know I have cholesterol problems.
Whew! Caloria-free drink can be converted into a high-calorie dessert in counteracting the potentially healthy benefit of coffee by some people, like cream and sweet syrup. “The junk food with as many as 500 to 600 calories can result in anything people put into coffee,” Willett said.
For example, a 16-ounce Mocha Frappuccino Starbucks contains 51 g of sugar, 15 g of fat (saturated with 10) and 370 calories. Decaf doesn’t have health benefits completely. Like caffeinated coffee, it contains polyphenols that can decrease the risk of diabetes type 2 and cancer.
