Coffee connoisseur confessional: Drink your cup of Joe, guilt free

I like my coffee like I like my coffee — black, about five times a day and accompanying most of my meals.

There are no euphemisms to decode here. I just really like coffee.

Coffee is as synonymous with college students as Netflix is with procrastination — both of which students indulge in to an ample extent, myself included.

And while I’m both an avid coffee drinker and Netflix watcher, I often bear more shame for my love of coffee than I do for my love of Netflix.

There’s no denying that there are negative perceptions of coffee drinkers like myself — we are a subset of addicts, grouped in the same unhealthy camp as the alcoholics and the smokers.

But that skewed perception is rooted in a great deal of false information. In light of recent findings, we should finally accept coffee for what it truly is — a vastly versatile and heavily misunderstood beverage.

As researchers are beginning to acknowledge, past studies conducted on coffee were distorted by a key factor — coffee drinkers, themselves. Coffee consumption has long gone hand-in-hand with an unhealthy lifestyle.

Often times, coffee drinkers doubled as smokers, neglected exercise and were less health-minded when it came to their diets. Separating the effects of personal lifestyle from those of coffee, alone, proved very difficult.

A National Institute of Health (NIH) study followed about 350,000 members of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) from 1995-2008, analyzing their diet and health patterns.

Over the course of the study, researchers discovered that coffee drinking was correlated with other lifestyle traits. Coffee drinkers were likely to be smokers, eat more red meat, eat fewer fruits and vegetables, exercise less and drink more alcohol. But once the lifestyle risks were controlled for, researchers discovered that the overall risk of death for those who drank about two to six or more cups of coffee a day was 10 percent lower for men and 15 percent lower for women.

However, findings in past studies frequently cast coffee as a beverage that posed entirely negative health effects. Previous research claimed that coffee increased the risk of developing certain cancers and heart disease. Other ill-supported myths developed tying coffee drinking to bone-density loss and calcium absorption impairment with claims of stunted growth and osteoporosis. Coffee has also often been lumped into the same category as addictive drugs of abuse, a classification scientists refute for the comparably minor risk of addiction and lack of severe side-effects.

Recently, better conducted studies have found the health risks usually associated with coffee drinking to be not only unfounded, but also countering reality. In early May, Aaron E. Carroll, a Professor of Pediatrics and Assistant Dean for Research Mentoring at Indiana University School of Medicine, wrote an article for The New York Times’ “The Upshot” blog, detailing the new consensus on health outcomes of drinking coffee. In the article, he included an aggregate of recent studies and findings.

Coffee has been shown, through several systematic reviews (in which researchers rigorously review all relevant studies on the subject matter) and meta-analysis studies (in which data from separate and comparable studies are statistically reviewed), to decrease the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, stroke, heart failure, liver cancer, liver disease, cirrhosis, hepatitis C, Parkinson’s disease and Type 2 diabetes.

For cancers of the prostate, breast and lung — which researchers have long assumed coffee negatively impacted — no significant association with coffee drinking was found. If anything, coffee appeared to have a somewhat protective quality against developing the cancers. In fact, in a study looking at all cancers, coffee was shown to be associated with reduced cancer development and a protective attribute.

Coffee was even shown to significantly reduce the risk of death, in two separate and expansive studies published in the Cambridge University Press.

But its effects and applications go beyond preventing life-threatening diseases. Coffee can also be an integral part of a healthy lifestyle.

Researchers at the University of Scranton discovered that coffee is the ultimate source of antioxidants in the U.S. The study’s lead author, Joe Vinson, said of the findings: “Americans get more of their antioxidants from coffee than any other dietary source. Nothing else comes close.”

And with a calorie count of around two per eight ounce cup — the typical serving size — coffee is a virtually cost-free addition to an otherwise heavily caloric diet.

However, there are unhealthy ways of drinking coffee, too. With the rise of Starbucks, and its slew of sugary, milky and obscenely fatty concoctions, coffee has been branded with a new image. While the drinks serve as a fun dessert (yes, dessert), they hardly constitute coffee. In reality, what little coffee is flowing beneath their whipped cream mountains does nothing for you health-wise.

The majority of studies conducted on coffee defined a cup as an eight ounce serving. A tall at Starbucks, the company’s “small,” is about 12 ounces. All of the research was conducted on pure, plain coffee — black, with none of the bells-and-whistles. Most studies didn’t begin to identify negative associations with coffee drinking until about 10 cups were reached.

In late February, a government advisory committee published a set of recommendations for the Agriculture and Health and Human Services Departments for consideration when writing its 2015 dietary guidelines. Along with recommendations about our intake of eggs, sugar, salt and meat, the committee also listed a set dealing with our intake of coffee. The committee determined that three to five cups of coffee over the course of a day — a moderate level of intake — is a good addition to a healthy diet.

If the recommendations make it into the final set of guidelines, the U.S. would be one step closer to being one of the “cool” countries. That’s not to say that coffee isn’t a part of American culture. It’s simply treated like every other cultural element in America — taken to the extreme.

Coffee drinking in the U.S. is not fun — it’s functional. The image of an American coffee drinker might as well accompany the dictionary definitions of stress and anxiety. This simply isn’t the case in other countries.

Eritrea is not only my birthplace, but also that of coffee. Eritrea was once part of Ethiopia, where coffee originated, and has a vastly different relationship with coffee. From a young age, my parents included me in the “coffee ceremonies” they conducted regularly. Sure, the process of roasting the beans, having the scent taken in by others, grinding the beans and boiling the coffee in the jebena before it could be served was a long one, but it was definitely worth it. Once the coffee was ready, we would sit and talk as we drank the coffee and ate small pastries. Coffee prepared the Eritrean way will always taste better than anything I’ve consumed that has been prepared differently.

There was no haste to conduct work, no likening coffee to a cheap drug and no styrofoam cups. Perhaps if regular coffee drinking became less taboo in the U.S., it would become similarly enjoyed — not simply needed.

Of course, coffee does have its string of effects — some of which can be considered negative.

Fundamentally, people typically cite one main reason for the consumption of coffee — caffeine. Caffeine is a stimulator. It can make you jittery. It can make it harder for you to fall asleep. It will make you pee more. But these are all personal effects. Caffeine affects everyone to a different extent, and you alone are the judge of whether those effects are too uncomfortable to bear.

But personal discomfort is no reason to paint coffee as a villainous beverage. If coffee isn’t your cup of tea, so be it. But if it is, then drink away — guilt-free.

Bethel primarily writes about social issues and current events for The Pitt News.

Write to Bethel at beh56@pitt.edu.