More evidence coffee drinkers live longer — even those ordering decaf

Quentin Fottrell

Tall, grande or venti? Your answer may depend on whether you believe this.

People who drink three to five cups of coffee a day may be less likely to die prematurely from some illnesses than those who drink less coffee or don’t drink any coffee at all, according to two major new studies released this week.

One study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal studied 521 330 people in 10 European countries over 16 years and found a statistically significant lower mortality rate among coffee drinkers. A second study in the same journal looked at 185 855 African-Americans, Native Hawaiians, Japanese-Americans, Latinos and Caucasians aged 45 to 75 years over 9 years, and found similar trends for caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee.

This supports a 2015 study released by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researchers and published online in the journal Circulation. In that 2015 study, drinkers of both caffeinated and decaffeinated also coffee saw benefits, including a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease, neurological diseases, Type 2 diabetes and suicide. “Moderate consumption of coffee may confer health benefits in terms of reducing premature death due to several diseases,” said senior author Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard.

And a 2012 study of over 400,000 men and women published in The New England Journal of Medicine, also found an association between coffee drinkers and lower rates of mortality due to several diseases including stroke, respiratory diseases and diabetes.

The data include nearly 168,000 women in the Nurses’ Health Study and look at factors influencing women’s health, plus 40,557 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, started in 1986 and designed to complement the Nurses’ Health Study, sponsored by the Harvard School of Public Health and the National Cancer Institute. Coffee drinking was assessed using validated food questionnaires every four years over about 30 years. During the study period, 19,524 women and 12,432 men died from a range of causes.

Why the health benefits? “Bioactive compounds in coffee reduce insulin resistance and systematic inflammation,” said fellow author Ming Ding, a doctoral student in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. “That could explain some of our findings.” Antioxidants in coffee may also help protect cells and prevent chronic diseases. More studies are needed to investigate the biological mechanisms producing these effects, Ding added. (Co-author Rob van Dam received research funding from Nestec S.A., a subsidiary of Nestlé for an earlier study.)

Despite the ubiquity of coffee shops, Americans are drinking roughly about half of what they did in the post-World War II years when most people drank about 48 gallons a year on average, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, previously cited by MarketWatch. Though in those days most Americans drank uber-boiled coffee from canned, pre-ground beans, a pale (or, more likely, dark) imitation of the current array of flat whites, cappuccinos and Frappuccinos which can run up to as many as 560 calories for a venti (large).

But not everyone is a fan of coffee. This 2015 European Food Safety Authority study found that high doses of caffeine (more than 400 milligrams or four cups per day) were associated with panic attacks, anxiety and nervousness.) And another 2014 study in the journal Cancer Causes Control cast doubt on earlier research that suggested an association between coffee drinking and lower rates of prostate cancer in men. Despite studies casting doubt on the benefits of coffee, the drink has not suffered the same bad press as soda or even diet soda.

(This story appeared in MarketWatch.)