My love affair with the bean began when I was in high school and had to be at marching band practice at 6:30 AM every morning. It started innocently enough with about half a cup of coffee before I left for school. In just a couple of months, it was a whole cup of coffee sipped while I got ready. And then before I knew it, it was a second cup in the car on my way to school.
While I was in college I would often drink a cup of coffee in the evening so I could stay awake and study. And then when I got my first job and was working third shift, I would drink a whole pot of coffee over the course of my shift.
In the decades since then, I have gone cold turkey and had no coffee (when I was pregnant or breastfeeding), back to a couple of cups a day and then on to an entire pot of coffee. Back and forth it would go. For the past five or six years I have settled into a two cup a day habit. (And for clarification, a cup means my coffee mug which probably holds closer to 12 ounces than a true cup.)
I admit I like the caffeine buzz; it jumpstarts my day. But I also genuinely love the taste of coffee. I usually drink it black and hot but I also like it iced or with cream or sweetener, depending on my mood. And my favorite way to enjoy it is on my patio while I read the newspaper (yes, a paper one not a digital one!).
Imagine my delight when I read in the Wall Street Journal this week that coffee might actually be good for you! After some additional research, I discovered that more and more research shows that coffee drinkers are less likely to have type-2 diabetes, Parkinson's disease and dementia (including Alzheimer's disease) and have fewer cases of certain cancers, heart rhythm problems and strokes compared to nondrinkers.
No one can say that drinking coffee prevents these conditions since researchers don't ask people to drink or not drink coffee for their studies. They simply ask about their coffee habits and, therefore, can't show cause and effect.
What is proven is that coffee has a very strong antioxidant capacity and contains magnesium and chromium - minerals that help the body use the hormone insulin which controls blood sugar. While more research is needed, researchers are very optimistic that drinking two to four eight-ounce cups of coffee per day has some great health benefits (note: pregnant and breastfeeding women should limit their caffeine intake to 200mg/day - about 12-ounces of coffee).
I wonder if coffee-haters will decide to learn to like coffee like vegetable-haters learn to like a few leafy greens?
Yeah, probably not.
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