Grounds for celebration: sugary coffee drinkers live longer

COFFEE drinkers live longer than abstainers even if they add sugar to their drink, a study has found.

Research has linked coffee to good health and long life, but the addition of sugar has not been assessed.

Sugar, which is now taxed in Britain, is increasingly being vilified due to proven links with health issues such as obesity, diabetes and tooth decay. Academics from China used data from more than 170,000 Britons who reported how many cups they had a day, and also how they liked their coffee, to see if a thimble of added sucrose was detrimental.

Over a seven-year follow-up period, the scientists tracked how many of the people died, developed cancer or got heart disease. They found that those who drank a moderate amount of coffee, between 1.5 and 3.5 cups a day, were less likely to die in this period, and that people who have three cups of unsweetened, bitter coffee a day, for example, were 29 per cent less likely to die than non-drinkers.

The trend was largely the same for people who do like sugar in their drink, with three cups of sugared coffee a day reducing risk compared with nondrinkers by 28 per cent.

The researchers from Southern Medical University wrote in their paper, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, that “moderate consumption of unsweetened and sugar-sweetened coffee was associated with lower risk for death”, but some experts are unconvinced.

Gunter Kuhnle, a professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Reading, said: “The results are far from clear. The study is informative and interesting, but does not justify any recommendation to change behaviour.”