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Coffee: A life or death issue to ponder
Paul Sassone
Updated: August 24, 2012 12:47PM
Drinking four or more cups of coffee a day might lower your risk of contracting colon cancer, a new study states.
Coffee, and the things used to roast it, contain known carcinogens.
So, is coffee a friendly morning pick-me-up or a Cauldron of Death? I hope the former since I’m slurping a cup of coffee as I write this.
Is coffee good for us or bad for us? I have discovered 19 reasons why coffee is bad for us. And I have discovered 16 reasons why drinking coffee is good for us.
Is coffee good or bad for us? How would I know? I’m just a consumer of coffee, not a medical expert.
Whenever some new information is publicized about the health benefits or health detriments of some food we (me included) scoff and say, “Sure, right.” Next week some study will show that pizza is nature’s perfect food and that we should eat it three times a day. And then some other study will claim that pizza is fatal if eaten in slices instead of squares.
We assume this more-than-skeptical attitude mostly because we want to continue to eat and drink what we like to eat and drink.
In actuality, we are happy, not perplexed, when science seems to give us contradictory information about the nutritional value of various foods and drinks. This gives us an excuse to ignore all such information and do what we want to do.
What I fear is that when science tells us coffee is good for us at the same time that science tells us coffee is bad for us that both statements are true.
In some ways, drinking coffee might be beneficial to our health. And in some ways drinking coffee may be detrimental to our health.
And is there such a thing as “our health?’’ People are so different, maybe there’s mostly your health and my health.
And so, drinking coffee might be more beneficial or detrimental to you than to me, or to me than to you.
This is not helpful.
A lack of absolute answers forces us to try to figure out on our own whether drinking coffee is good for us of bad for us.
We might have to seek guidance from the Internet.
Or, perhaps even consult a doctor.
I have a headache.
Wonder if it’s the coffee? ~.
