Have a cup, it's OK, really

Coffee has always been a guilty pleasure for me. I drink a lot of it, but I do so knowing that it might not be especially good for me. In particular, I have harbored a suspicion that it’s causing some pesky cysts.

So imagine my surprise when I began to research this story and discovered that medical experts now say coffee is not only non-lethal, it actually has significant health benefits.

Years ago, coffee was said to cause cancers and heart disease. But studies over the last two decades conducted by, among others, Harvard Medical School (and reported as reliable by sources including the Mayo Clinic and Journal of the American Medical Association), contradicted those early findings. It turned out that one reason so many coffee drinkers got those diseases was because they also tended to be heavy smokers who didn’t eat right and who didn’t exercise.

Newer studies have found that coffee (in moderation — defined as about three cups a day) not only does the obvious things, such as improve short-term performance in athletics and reduce the bite of headaches; it’s also said that coffee drinkers are less likely to get type 2 diabetes and liver and colon cancer and are less likely to develop gallstones. It’s also been found that people who drink about three cups a day are less likely to develop Parkinson’s disease.

And here’s a curious fact: Some research has indicated that people who are heavy smokers and drinkers are actually  less likely to suffer from heart disease or get liver cancer if they drink a few cups a day.

This is cause for celebration. But celebration in moderation, of course. Don’t go wild and start drinking a pot a day; three cups is plenty (especially if they’re big cups, like the kind I get at the gas station every morning).

So the next question is whether there are qualitative differences between types of coffee and styles of brewing and what you serve it with.

The first obvious answer is: drink it black. The more cream and sugar you add, the more calories, fats and useless carbs you add. Having said that, I plan to continue lightening my brew with a little swizzle every day of whole milk. By the way, don’t kid yourself into thinking that the milk in your coffee has health benefits. Coffee might be healthy in many ways, but it is still believed to block your body’s ability to absorb calcium.

As for the differences in brewing styles and the beans themselves, well, I haven’t got the definitive answer on that one yet. Look for it in future columns.