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One more week, another coffee-is-good-for-you Study that caught people’s attention. New research found an association between regular coffee consumption and a reduced risk of death. While the latest evidence suggests that coffee is perfectly fine, it’s not necessarily strong evidence that your daily cup of coffee is life-saving.
The study was conducted by researchers from Southern Medical University in China released in the annals of internal medicine. It examined data from the UK Biobank, a long-standing research project tracking Britain’s health Resident. As part of the People details their dietary habits, including their coffee consumption.
Compared to people who didn’t report drinking coffee, the researchers said found, people who drank coffee (up to and over 4.5 cups per day) were less likely than seven to die from any cause-year follow-upward period. This pattern held true after accounting for other factors such as a person’s lifestyle and even when people reported drinking sugar-sweetened coffee.
“Moderate consumption of unsweetened and sugar-sweetened coffee was associated with a lower risk of death,” the study said authors wrote.
Like Gizmodo did covered before, this is anything but the first work to suggest that coffee is good for you. Other studies have found an association between coffee consumption and a lower risk of heart failure, liver damage, and even early death. Overall, these studies outweigh those that suggest coffee might be harmful health. So at this point there isn’t much debate left whether coffee is an “unhealthy” food, at least for the average person. (PPeople with certain medical conditions such as B. clinical anxiety should probably avoid this the stimulating effect of caffeine, although.)
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All in all, researching the pros and cons of foods is always difficult, and nutritionists usually have to conduct research that comes with some major caveats. This study, the authors themselves note, only looked at people’s diets at a single point in time. It’s possible that some people started or stopped drink coffee after the start of studies. It’s also possible that people misremembered their typical diet, a common error in this type of survey.
But perhaps the most important caveat is that correlation is not necessarily causation. Coffee drinkers can be different from those who purposely abstain from coffee. For example, they tend to exercise more or eat healthier. Scientists try to account for these types of factors, but it is often not possible to completely eliminate this type of noise in the data.
Interestingly, the study did not find that same context for artificially sweetened coffee. That could mean that mixing your espresso with Splenda instead of a packet of sugar makes the drink less healthybut it could also be an example of why these conclusions aren’t quite as solid as the headlines suggest.
This type of research, known as an observational study, is an important part of science. Frequentlywe just can’t gold-standard clinical study to test theories about the world. But we shouldn’t take as gospel the numbers that any single study churns out (in this one, the associated risk of early death for coffee drinkers was up to 30% lower). Given the body of evidence, rest easy knowing that drinking coffee in moderation is unlikely to do you any harm. But any conclusion beyond that it is cloudier.
And honestly, who cares? I certainly don’t drink my daily coffee because I think it makes me live longer – I just like the taste and the morning punch it gives me.