
Americans should drink more coffee - ulysses
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/21/its-official-americans-should-drink-more-coffee/
======
bluthru
Is it possible to see how much if any money was given to the committee from
the coffee industry?

[http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/committee/#members](http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/committee/#members)

~~~
bicknergseng
Was my first thought, too, after reading about the link between the sugar
industry and those early sugar studies.

Seems to me like the scientific community should be overly open about its
sources of funding, conflicts of interest, etc if it wants to maintain public
trust going forward.

~~~
nmrm
It is. Typically if you publish in a _respected_ and _peer reviewed_ journal,
you are required to disclose sources of funding in the article. Especially if
those sources include for-profit companies, you're in for a world of hurt if
you don't.

But the "scientific community", so far as such a thing exists, can't censure
news reports, government reports, or corporate reports that claim "X is true
because science". It also cannot stop someone from publishing a "scientific"
journal.

"Science" is not a Trade Mark, and scientists cannot solve for clueless
consumers who believe everything if you say "because science!" Especially when
those same consumers fail to fund / pay attention in quality post-secondary
science education.

------
ZeroCoin
>it's unlikely to do anything other than make you more alert and awake.

I find that extremely hard to believe.

If I drink 5 cups of coffee per day I get heart palpitations, an upset
stomach, and am extremely irritable in general. The same goes for my
significant other.

I actually went to a heart specialist and wore a heart monitor for 48 hours
last year because I was having an irregular heartbeat and would black-out
occasionally after jumping up out of a chair. The diagnosis? I'm fine. I just
need to ingest less caffeine.

I think I'll stick with my one cup per day, below average amount.

It's just enough to wake up me, keep me alert, without any of the negative
effects that caffeine brings with it.

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wwweston
OTOH:

[http://www.inc.com/travis-bradberry/caffeine-the-silent-
kill...](http://www.inc.com/travis-bradberry/caffeine-the-silent-killer-of-
success.html)

Claims: caffeine only improves mental performance in those habituated to
caffeine, triggers body chemistry leaning towards fight/flight responses,
disrupts sleep

None of this is necessarily at odds with the WaPo article, which appears to
mostly claim that there are no increased mortality/chronic disease risks
associated with high coffee consumption (and some decreased risk of
diabetes/cardiovascular risk?).

~~~
vmarsy
This should be taken with a huge grain of salt: The article pointed is dated
Feb 2015 but see all these articles:

[1] from September 2014

[2] from Feb 2015

[3] from September 2014

[6] : From August _2012_

All from this "Dr. Travis ..." . They all quote "New research from Johns
Hopkins Medical School" , without ever giving the source of that research. If
you google a bit for it you will find some information from Johns Hopkins
University[4] : "Caffeine Has Positive Effect on Memory"; some study [5] from
The Johns Hopkins Precursors Study in 2002 (so hardly "new") discuss about
coffee, but "these associations were not statistically significant". You will
notice that from August 2012 to February 2015, it was always "New research"

In conclusion, this LinkedIn blog post (from which all articles copy/paste
from) lacks a lot of sources, especially if written by someone who holds a
dual Ph.D. in clinical and industrial-organizational psychology (according to
his Forbes personal page).

[1] [http://www.ihcus.com/2014/09/11/the-effects-of-
coffee-](http://www.ihcus.com/2014/09/11/the-effects-of-coffee-) helpful-or-
harmful/

[2][http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-drinking-one-cup-
of...](http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-drinking-one-cup-of-coffee-
each-day-is-killing-your-success-2015-2)

[3]
[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140908162020-50578967-caffe...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140908162020-50578967-caffeine-
the-silent-killer-of-success)

[4]
[http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/stories/caffeine_memory....](http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/stories/caffeine_memory.html)

[5]
[http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=21133...](http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=211334)

[6] :
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbradberry/2012/08/21/caffe...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbradberry/2012/08/21/caffeine-
the-silent-killer-of-emotional-intelligence/)

------
kazinator
Ha, I just noticed a referenced story below this one:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/14/a...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/14/almost-
half-of-the-world-actually-prefers-instant-coffee/)

Me too!

I used to hunt for freshly and properly roasted quality beans, and grind them
myself before each brew, and all that.

What I have come to this this: few coffees compare to Nescafe Gold a.k.a.
Taster's Choice.

Certainly nothing that you can order around town from places like ####bucks or
whatever.

Those Nestle buggers have figured out how to make great testing freeze-dried
coffee. And it's so consistent! I've drank the stuff under different names on
different continents, and it's exactly the same. (Modulo minor variations like
"blend" or "dark roast").

And it's so cheap and easy just to throw a teaspoon of brown powder into hot
water. Why bother with anything else.

Whenever I happen to have a coffee somewhere (socially, since I'd never do
such a thing by myself any more) I'm actually wishing that the damn slop was
Nescafe Gold!

~~~
dntrkv
I feel the title of that article is misleading. From the article:

'"The markets where instant coffee is most popular tend to be the ones without
a strong tradition of coffee drinking," Dana LaMendola, and industry analyst
at Euromonitor, said in an interview. "It's basically an entry point."'

So it's not that people prefer one over the other, it's because they don't
have much of a coffee culture and people don't really care about the quality
of their coffee. Saying you prefer instant coffee to quality, roasted beans is
like saying you prefer a prepackaged, microwavable dinner to a properly cooked
meal.

~~~
dragonwriter
Or, places with a "strong tradition of coffee drinking" are resistant to
change independent of actual quality -- because coffee is ritualized -- and so
tend not to prefer instant coffee even to cheap (in the quality rather than
price sense) roasted beans.

~~~
dntrkv
That's ridiculous. Would you say the same about areas where people consume
more microwaved dinners over cooked meals? That the people cooking their meals
are just resistant to change?

~~~
dragonwriter
> That the people cooking their meals are just resistant to change?

That's not what I said in the coffee case; I said that the preference
_differences_ between places with strong coffee traditions and those without
may be partially due to the fact that having a strong tradition of coffee
drinking _includes_ a culture attached to the ritual of preparation.

I did not say that the people _in_ an area that has a relatively strong
preference for instant who individually do not are "just resistant to change".

That being said, you certainly might see something similar in regional
distribution of preferences for prepackaged foods vs. freshly-prepared foods
that aren't explained by other socioeconomic factors, though I'd expect that
"food" is general enough that you it would be a very weak factor (though
probably much stronger if you look at _specific_ foods rather than "food" as a
whole.)

------
guelo
It's weird that the panel didn't take into account the harmful effects of
disrupted sleep patterns. They did note a concern about the extra calories
from milk and sugar added to coffee.

------
imperialdrive
I was _just_ debating whether to go out for coffee now, or in an hour. Now it
is!

Most people I work with splash a lot of cream and sugar in their coffee -
probably hurts the study.

------
everyone
I decided to give up caffeine. I used to drink a lot of tea. I thought maybe
it was making me anxious + using caffeine as a stimulant is a zero-sum game.

~~~
quanticle
You don't have to necessarily give up tea because you've given up caffeine.
There are lots of no-caffeine teas out there (many of which are quite good).

I've (largely) given up caffeine as well, but I still enjoy a warm cup of tea
in the morning, especially in winter. :)

~~~
everyone
Yeah I drink a thing called 'barley cup' its grand!

------
brandon272
Is it possible to get these supposed benefits from coffee if it's decaf?

~~~
maxerickson
The research is quite focused on caffeine but mentions some benefit from
decaf:

[http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015-scientific-
report/1...](http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015-scientific-
report/14-appendix-e2/e2-39a.asp)

~~~
wwweston
From the link:

"Coffee consumption was associated with reduced risk of total mortality (3-4%
lower mortality with 1 cup/day), especially cardiovascular mortality"
"Decaffeinated coffee consumption was associated with a lower risk of death"

This makes it sound like coffee consumption helps and decaf consumption helps
more when it comes to mortality risks.

Also, if I'm reading it right, that link says unfiltered caffeinated increases
LDL blood levels, which I'm given to understand is bad.

It sounds like decaf is better...

~~~
maxerickson
I read "Decaffeinated coffee consumption was associated with a lower risk of
death" to mean that they lack sufficient data to quantify it, not as a
comparison to caffeinated.

------
mitchi
If you are someone that doesn't eat many vegetables or take vitamins, I can
see why coffee would be recommended. It does contain a very high amount of
flavanols antioxydants... I'm not a big fan of the caffeine however.

~~~
Tloewald
Caffeine is a surprisingly benign "drug" (especially since it appears to have
evolved as a natural insecticide).

Personally, I'm not a "fan" of taking vitamins.

~~~
everyone
Yes. Isn't there no evidence in favour of taking vitamin supplement? And
recently mounting evidence that in fact it may be harmful if anything?

------
therealidiot
This world is clearly not meant for those of us who dislike coffee :-(

~~~
JetSpiegel
And alcohol. I think I'll just say I'm a Muslim or something.

------
colept
Tomorrow there will be a study that says coffee is poison, and the next day it
will be a miracle cure. It's difficult to take these arguments seriously when
they're countered almost daily.

Life is about taking calculated risks. I prefer the moderation route.

~~~
Tloewald
The whole "they'll keep saying the opposite thing anyway" argument is tired.
Sure, there have been prominent reversals, but usually behind it is an
industry lobby group, not science.

There have been studies attempting to show coffee is harmful for decades
(basically, there seems to be a general suspicion that anything people enjoy
is probably harmful), and the results have been consistently ambiguous or in
favor of coffee.

------
xasos
If your sole purpose of drinking coffee is for the caffeine, caffeine pills
are a great alternative. Sure there is a lot of negative stigmatism around
pills in general, but they are significantly cheaper and more effective than
drinking pure coffee.

------
philip1209
It frustrates me that they never give the official name of the panel.

------
srameshc
This article doesn't mention quantity in standard unit like ml and doesn't
mention that coffee shouldn't be adulterated with pumps of sugars.

------
hackbinary
How many cups of coffee do people drink in Seattle and Vancouver, and is that
linked to their longevity?

~~~
jefe78
Vancouver reporting in! Consumption is quite high from my anecdotal
experience. I personally consume ~3-6 cups a day. I work in the tech field up
here and that seems to be pretty standard.

~~~
wwweston
And since the tech industry is known for its high concentration of workers
productive well into their later decades... ;)

------
neves
Does this 3 cups is of expresso, filtered, or the watery stuff common in USA?

~~~
nmrm
3 cups of espresso would be a fantastic amount of coffee. You'd actually have
a medical condition of you drank that much espresso every day:

~64 mg caffeine / ounce in espresso

64 mg/ounce * 8 ounces * 3 = 1536 mg

From wikipedia: "Consumption of 1000–1500 mg per day is associated with a
condition known as caffeinism."

~~~
SEMW
I imagine when most people say 'a cup of espresso' they're thinking of a
demitasse of the stuff, not using '1 cup' in the unit-of-volume sense (which'd
be an ~octuple espresso)

------
ianstallings
That might be kind of tough. We're already taking it via IV.

------
lupinglade
Not so healthy with cream and sugar...

