Two cups of cappuccino with latte art on wooden desktop
The latest data point that the coffee-addicted will surely tout to justify structuring their days around latte availability (speaking from personal experience) has arrived.
A new study out of Europe finds an association between living longer, lower risk of cardiovascular disease and drinking two to three cups of coffee per day.
Researchers used data from the UK Biobank, which has data on hundreds of thousands of volunteers aged 40 to 69.
Almost 450,000 participants were surveyed on their coffee drinking habits and then follow ups were made over the next several years, with the median follow up being 12.5 years. A little over 6% of the participants died during the time between when they filled out the questionnaire on their coffee intake and when the follow-up was done.
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The data showed that those who drank two to three cups of coffee per day were up to 27% less likely to have died compared to those who abstained from coffee altogether. Specifically, people who reported drinking decaffeinated coffee had a 14% lower likelihood of death, instant coffee drinkers were 11% less likely to have died and those with a ground coffee habit made up the group that were 27% less likely to have passed away.
“The results suggest that mild to moderate intake of ground, instant and decaffeinated coffee should be considered part of a healthy lifestyle,” said study author Professor Peter Kistler of the Baker Heart and Diabetes Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia.
Similarly, the reduction in risk of cardiovascular disease was 6%, 20%, and 9% for decaffeinated, ground, instant coffee, respectively.
The study was published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.
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Now it’s important to note that this study actually does very little to establish that these lower risks of heart disease and death are caused by drinking coffee on the regs. Perhaps it’s having a daily routine that really offers the health benefits, or something else that the data doesn’t quite capture that explains this statistically significant difference in outcomes.
But there is a growing scientific literature that suggests coffee, which has many of us feeling like slaves to its energy-boosting properties, may really be good for us on balance.
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“Caffeine is the most well-known constituent in coffee, but the beverage contains more than 100 biologically active components,” Kistler says. “It is likely that the non-caffeinated compounds were responsible for the positive relationships observed between coffee drinking, cardiovascular disease and survival.”
“Our findings indicate that drinking modest amounts of coffee of all types should not be discouraged but can be enjoyed as a heart healthy behavior.”
