Coffee: good news and bad news
Saturday, June 19, 2010 
I love coffee so I was delighted to read a story on the BBC website today that suggests that "Drinking several cups of tea or coffee a day appears to protect against heart disease, a 13-year-long study from the Netherlands has found ...
"Those who drank more than six cups of tea a day cut their risk of heart disease by a third, the study of 40,000 people found. Consuming between two to four coffees a day was also linked to a reduced risk."
According to the British Heart Foundation: "This study adds further weight to the evidence that drinking tea and coffee in moderation is not harmful for most people, and may even lower your risk of developing, or dying, from heart disease."
But wait, what's this?
The BHF adds: "Having a cigarette with your coffee could completely cancel any benefits, while drinking lots of tea in front of the TV for hours on end without exercising is unlikely to offer your heart much protection at all."
Damn and blast.
Full story HERE.
Reader Comments (12)
I like my cuppa tea, so good news.
I like a fag with it.
"Having a cigarette with your coffee could completely cancel any benefits, while drinking lots of tea in front of the TV for hours on end without exercising is unlikely to offer your heart much protection at all."
So the two cancel each other out, so no more at risk than non-smokers?
Does watching TV cause and drinking tea cause heart disease?
Blimey!
Did the BHF support or lobby for the ban BTW?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good news today, but tomorrow they’ll be telling us that it causes something ghastly, just to keep us all on our toes and to make sure that we don’t relax in our ever-vigilant attempts to achieve “perfect health.” I simply don’t believe a word of any of these health stories these days - good or bad. Who funded this study? Costa Coffee? Nescafe? Well, don’t worry, Tetleys or PG Tips will be along shortly to fund another one showing all the dreadful effects of too much coffee, and telling us how much better tea-drinking is for our wellbeing!
And yes, Joseph. The BHF took a very active part in supporting the ban. I don’t know if they actually lobbied or not, but they certainly didn’t hesitate to put their six penn’orth in in support of it.
I drink gallons of filter coffee at work but am a comfirmed tea drinker outside of work hours. Which means when I go back to work after a fornight holiday I get caffine caused ectopic heart beats and become all shakey while my body adjusts to the caffine again! It's worth it! Coffee gets the thumbs up for me - despite the rat carcinogens the comes with it.
I was estimating my "addiction" levels the other day and here they are with notes:
Nicotine: 8.5/10, fag and any drink go together
Coffee: 9/10, I get quite grumpy without a cup of coffee, 7 cups a day.
Alcohol: 5/10, I can go 5 or 6 days without a drink and it does not bother me.
Bread: 9.5/10, I cannot have any food that does not come with a couple of door steps, slices or a roll. It comes from when I was a footballer and was burning up to 5,000 calories a day training and playing. There is in exercise such a thing as the "wall" where all the carbohydrates are burnt from running and my body craved for an instant fix of energy replacement.
After all this talk of bread I am going to have to fix myself a sandwich.
Yet More crap!!! When the hell is this idociy going to stop.
Not wanting to get too serious about a lighthearted fluff piece but..... they don't even try to be scientific now, do they? If there's something in tea and coffee which reduces heart attacks then that's that. What the Hell does "sitting on a couch drinking tea won't do you any good" mean? You either ingest the chemical or you don't. If you ingest warfarin your blood thins regardless of whether you're "sat on the couch watching TV." If you ingest carbohydrates your insulin spikes regardless of whether you're" sat on the couch watching TV". So how is this chemical ingredient so magically different that ingestion seems to miraculously have no benefit if one is sat down and not partaking in their State-sponsored calisthenics programme?. Presumably their mythical and invented "five a day" also has no effect if one eats them while chilling out in front of the box? Or are we to assume that it is actually the exercise that is good for the heart if tea consumption only benefits exercisers but not non-exercisers? (That would seem to be the logical conclusion here - you know, if you, dur, so science).
They just can't help tacking on their Healthist Nannying claptrap, can they?.
I'd also be interested to see the original research to see if they had a control group of smokers who drank tea/coffee and smokers who did not, to see if they actually have any real data to justify their claims that smoking cancels out the benefits or if this too was simply "tacked on." That's usually what happens with htis rubbish....
"Having a cigarette with your coffee could completely cancel any benefits, while drinking lots of tea in front of the TV for hours on end without exercising is unlikely to offer your heart much protection at all."
Yes, but if you're playing Tomb Raider on the screen, and making Lara perform death-defying, heart-in-the-mouth leaps across perilous abysses, then you win back all the health benefits again...
I'm the living testament to this profound truth.
I'm with you Misty - I just don't believe anything, good or bad that these supposed charities come up with. I certainly will not support them in any way, shape or form because of the lies and manipulation of the truth regarding 'research' and 'facts'.
They are ultimately shooting themselves in the foot as they have lost credibility with anyone who has an ounce of common sense and they have also lost charitable donors who no longer believe in them. That goes for other so called charities too, like CRUK - I will not support any such charity now, although this might be tarring them all with the same brush, I cannot trust them.
If I give to charities it is usually local animal welfare charities where I can see the difference that is being made.
"If I give to charities it is usually local animal welfare charities where I can see the difference that is being made."
Lyn were you aware of a post on a newspaper site about "4th hand smoke", there was a fierce and unpleasant arguement ensued when someone claiming to be veterinary nurse claimed her relatives had deilitated or killed their dogs with SHS...
Joseph, no I was not aware of this. However it is a little different, I believe, to what these big psuedo charities say they do.
I give to local wildlife charities and to the local Dogs Trust, where we got our beloved Greyhound from, although often there we give more in kind than in actual money.
I just despair of the fraudulence used by some of the bigger charities who claim to need the money for research into curing diseases such as cancer and then use a vast amount of it to distribute scare stories about legal and relatively harmless things such as smoking!
Before someone pops up to say that the smoking is not harmless, it is far less harmful than what is spewed out of motor vehicles, yet a bus can stand in an enclosed bus station with its engine running and fill the air with obnoxious diesel fumes and huge amounts of dangerous toxins, yet a passenger waiting to board a bus in said bus station cannot smoke because apparently their SHS might kill someone! This is the sort of pathetic propoganda that these so called charities have a hand in, it seems and therefore I will not support them.
It does upset some people who ask for sponsorship in support of cancer charities and I refuse because of the charity they are raising funds for. Then again, it upsets me greatly that so many apparently intelligent people can be so gullible as to accept all the nonsense they are being fed!
Sorry for going off your point a bit; as you can see, I do get very frustrated at times, as well as angry!
Don't we all Lynn!
The righteous now sink from the poor kiddies to cats, dogs and goldfish (probably).
My small lean half wippet, half lab lasted from 1976 to 1990, not a bad innings for a smoking household - whats that in dog years now...?
On a brighter note - i never have a coffee without a ciggie if I can help it... so as long as I make it the rule in future,the benefit of one cancels out the 'harm' of the other and it's as if neither actually happened.... wonder if there's an equalisor for Sainsburys' jammy doughnuts....