WE'VE BEAN HAD!
They said it gives us heart attacks – but now experts find 25 cups of coffee a DAY do no harm. After butter and eggs were also taken off the naughty step, why do health nannies always get it so wrong?
oH, Joyous day. Hear the peal of millions of cups being tapped with spoons as coffee fans celebrate the overturning of a great miscarriage mis of justice. Coffee will not harm your heart, even if you dow down 25 cups a day. The deep, dark essence of our waking mornings was once in the category of a pleasure tha that ought really to be giveen given up up. Drinking too much coffee was deemed bad for the arteries and the likely cause of cardiovascular disease, howled the medical profession. Academics had long admonished us with warnings that coffee drinking stiffened the arteries, putting pressure on the heart, which made the risk of heart attack or stroke more likely. But now, coffee has been found not guilty of this particular crime. The results of a new study, part-backed by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), have found foun that drinking large amounts of coffee, up to an eye-watering 25 cups a day, has the same effect as drinking less than one cup. eight thousand people in the UK were divided into in groups ranging from light to heavy coffee coff drinkers in tests carried out by Queen Mary University of London. Their health was examined forensically, using MRI scanners and infra-red pulse tests and, yes, even the most addicted of coffee drinkers’ arteries a were found to be as soft as silk stockings. Maybe that’s going slightly over the top, but I am in high spirits. I need coffee. I am the coffee drinker who crawls to my stovetop top percolator, scoop of freshly ground beans in hand, every morning. The five minutes spent waiting for the dusky liquid to gently brew are desperately bleary. Ten minutes later the corpse — me — has twitched because I have drunk and I’m preparing the next batch. By lunchtime I have had my fill, about five or six cups, and even reheated some coffee in the microwave that I let go cold. Until yesterday, however, there had been a lurking concern that I drink a harmful amount. The reputation of coffee, like so many other things we do not just enjoy but rely on, has so often been traduced over the years. There has long been conflicting advice on the right amount to drink, but in terms of maintaining good heart health, medical experts, including the BHF, have advised drinking no more than four or five small cups of coffee a day.
The link between coffee drinking and cardiovascular illness has long been suspected and studied, so to know now that downing cups in double figures will not make a difference is a considerable relief.
It is also irritating in its way, because we have been here before with others of our favourite foods.
Take butter. For decades eating butter was said to be worse for your heart than ‘spreads’ made from processed vegetable fats. Then it was found that the trans-fats in refined vegetable oils were far worse for us and that butter contained fatty acids that are truly beneficial.
eggs were subject to the same witch-hunt. For the first 20 years of my adult life, I trusted the heart-health police who advocated eating no more than three whole eggs a week or risk increasing blood cholesterol. That guidance was spectacularly overturned by leading UK heart and health advisors when it was found that most people can eat eggs without adverse effects. All limits have now been relaxed. I’m on egg catch-up, so to speak.
You may, as I do, sometimes get the impression that as soon as we find something we like, there’s
someone waiting to tell you to cut it out.
That is not to say that coffee does not have its harmful side.
Mostly it is not the drink, but the additive plopped into it to provide even more energy — sugar. Adding a couple of teaspoons to your five (let alone 25) cups a day will obviously massively increase your calorie intake. Concerns about coffee itself are often, rightly, debated: coffee consumption during pregnancy has been linked to low birth weight and raises the risk of bone fractures in susceptible women.
And of course there is the sleep issue. I do not suffer from this, and can drink a strong Italian espresso late at night and sleep like a log. others I know never dare to drink coffee even at breakfast, saying it will result in sleeplessness hours later when they go to bed.
You find your ‘happy’ coffee level eventually, though I have long subscribed to the theory that plain unsweetened black coffee is less likely to set your heart racing than a cappuccino, made with steamed milk, late at night. In Italy it is considered infra dig to drink milky coffee later than 11am — and they know their coffee, so my theory must be true.
The stimulant in coffee, caffeine, is also finding its way into products we put on the of our bodies, and proving to be genuinely therapeutic. Caffeine is added to body creams to treat cellulite, the unsightly fat beneath our skin. Deep massage over a period of weeks with caffeine based creams and gels has been shown to firm the skin.
I was given a face scrub from a natural cosmetics shop containing coffee grounds. It feels nice, but makes my skin smell like the inside of the dishwasher.
So ingrained is coffee in our lives that the studies to seek out its benefits will never stop. This was summed up in a ‘study of studies’ last year, in which 200 research projects into coffee and health were analysed by scientists at the University of Southampton and published in the British Medical Journal.
They concluded that coffee drinking may reduce liver disease, the risk of cancers (in some people) and also the chance of suffering a stroke. It has also been suggested that coffee simply makes you live longer — but only if drunk in moderation. Where does that leave the 25-a-day man or woman? eradicating the guilt of taking too many cups a day has other virtues: being a coffee devotee is about more than needing a morning jump-start because it is part of our culture. I do not mean that in a highfalutin way, but coffee is more than a pulse-quickener; it is a driver of society.
ever since the first ‘coffee house’ opened in oxford in 1652, coffee drinking has fuelled chatter, the spreading of news and gossip, politics and creativity.
For many, it replaced the traditional morning drink of beer and was, understandably, seen as a cure for alcoholism. And in those days people began to extol its benefits for this very reason — as well as the fact that people who drank it seemed to be invigorated and worked harder. P erhaps it was the growth of coffee houses and the immense popularity of the beverage that brought down the wrath of the medical establishment.
In the 19th century there came warnings that coffee would make you blind — and that it was as bad for you as taking strychnine. By the early 20th century, Good Housekeeping magazine was writing about how coffee stunts your growth.
Soon there were those warnings about blood pressure, arteries and heart attacks.
And now we learn it is practically a health food. That BMJ ‘study of studies’ laid a strong foundation for its rehabilitation. This latest research has had it confirmed.
So, whether you are an aficionado seeking the fruity notes of beans grown on a single estate in deepest Colombia, whether you opt for a triple shot of espresso or prefer a good old dose of Nescafe, you can drink without fear of the health police.
And however you take it, it is going to taste an awful lot better now you know it’s good for you.