Researchers have told us repeatedly, over the past few years, that coffee can help reduce our risk of cardiovascular disease. They’ve spotlighted the drink’s polyphenols as beneficial. But now, they’re also lauding caffeine…
Panera Bread’s former ‘featured’ caffeinated fountian drinks: Charged
Lemonades subsequently discontinued after three deaths…
Who’d have thought? Caffeine has lately been condemned as a dietary devil in tales of grievous injury and even death connected to so-called ‘energy’ and ‘charged’ drinks. But now, coffee’s ubiquitous caffeine content has been linked to heart health benefits.
Broad spectrum
Moderate caffeine consumption has been credited with offering, ‘a protective effect’ against multiple cardiometabolic diseases, The benefits may extend to type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke, according to new research.
A new study published this month by The Endocrine Society says some coffee is okay – maybe even beneficial to the average person. More so than too much, or even too little.
What they did
According to an abstract of the study report, the researchers based their findings on data from the UK Biobank, a large and detailed longitudinal dietary study with over 500,000 participants aged 37-73 years.
The study excluded individuals who had ambiguous information on caffeine intake. The resulting pool of participants included a total of 172,315 individuals who were free of any cardiometabolic diseases at baseline for the analyses of caffeine, and a corresponding 188,091 individuals for the analyses of coffee and tea consumption.
What they found
“Consuming three cups of coffee, or 200-300 mg caffeine, per day might help to reduce the risk of developing cardiometabolic multimorbidity [CM] in individuals without any [initial] cardiometabolic disease,” said the study’s Lead Author Dr. Chaofu Ke of the Suzhou Medical College of Soochow Uni-versity (Suzhou, China).
Compared with non-consumers or consumers of less than 100mg caffeine per day, consumers of mo-derate amount of coffee (3 cups per day) or total caffeine intake of 200-300 mg per day had a 48.1 percent or 40.7 percent reduced risk for new-onset CM, respectively
The takeaway
“The findings highlight that promoting moderate amounts of coffee or [all-source] caffeine intake as a dietary habit to healthy people might have far-reaching benefits for the prevention of CM,” Ke said.
CM-associated diseases kill or maim millions, and cost global healthcare systems hundreds of billi-ons of dollars, every year.
My take
This new guidance from the lab can apparently be taken to the street, so to speak without further research to confirm or refine it. That’s unusual, but most welcome by folks worldwide who habitually drink several coffees a day.
But it’s also important to note that the researchers differentiate total caffeine consumption from simple coffee ‘dosage’. A small cup of coffee may have only about 90 mg of caffeine, while a ‘large’ may contain 140 mg or more.
Not just coffee!
But we also get caffeine from other common, everyday sources – not the least of which is fizzy drinks; primarily but not exclusively Colas. A 12 oz / 355 ml can of Coke Classic, for example, contains 34 mg of caffeine. The same amount of Diet Coke contains 46 mg.
But so-called energy drinks can contain much more. A regular sized can of some energy drinks con-tains an average of 100 mg of caffeine. But ‘super’, ‘charged’ brands may contain as much per can as 400 mg – the daily recommended maximum for daily caffeine intake. The latter are formulated par-ticularly to appeal to extreme users such as elite gamers, who want not only to stay sharp, but to enjoy a performance boost.
‘Charged’ resto bevs
At the non-elite extreme of daily experience, some caffeine-‘charged’ restaurant fountain beverages may also deliver caffeine doses near to or at the daily maximum. That’s the stuff Panera Bread patrons who were hospitalized or died drank too much of…
~ Maggie J.