Sunday, January 28, 2001		Article

NO substance has been the subject of more health bulletins—mostly contradictory—than coffee. Over the years, countless researchers have declared coffee bad for virtually every part of the human system. People eagerly consume these reports along with their morning coffee.

On the other hand, reports routinely surface which rate this bean—the second most actively traded commodity on the planet after crude oil—as beneficial. Among the benefits listed: increases energy and endurance, staving off exhaustion; keeps workers alert at night, especially those driving at night; gives the brain a boost, the beneficial effect of coffee on mental output more marked with older people than the young; reduces depression and suicide risk; even helps colds. Anyway it’s made out that coffee poses no risk to your heart or general health if taken in moderation—"moderation" defined by experts as an intake of 500-600gm of caffeine per day or about five coffee cups of average strength.

"So don’t panic when the health police knock at your door. Offer them a cup of coffee instead," say the brew’s backers.

Many studies published in the 1970s and early 1980s seemed to implicate coffee in everything from bladder, pancreatic and breast cancer and high cholesterol to increased heart attacks, premature births and low birth weights. Further research revealed, however, that the listed factors of heavy coffee drinkers frequently included unhealthy behaviour such as cigarette smoking, which was often later fond to be the chief culprit.

Coffee’s role in raising cholesterol has been linked not to the caffeine itself but to the oil from the coffee beans. Using paper filters reduces the problem because the bean oils get trapped in the filter as the coffee passes through it. French presses don’t use paper filters but then they produce better-tasting coffee.

Notwithstanding conflicting findings, it appears that coffee does not incur any added cardiac risk for drinkers who consume fewer than about five cups a day.

Female coffee drinkers will be relieved to hear that no studies have confirmed relationship between coffee and breast cancer. Yet women who drink caffeine lose more calcium in their urine (coffee, a diuretic, produces more urine). Thus they may end up having less dense bones than do non-consumers. Calcium loss makes them more susceptible to bone fracture; quite a common occurrence in the elderly. However, a recent study demonstrated that drinking just one glass of milk can offset the calcium loss induced by two cups of coffee.

There is then the finding that drinking more than three cups of coffee a day lowers a woman’s chances of conception by a third. And excessive caffeine consumption has been linked to miscarriages and low birth weight. Caffeine passes easily through the placenta to the foetus, and through the mother’s milk to the breast-fed baby.

A 1981 study had concluded that coffee was a major cause of pancreatic cancer. The same now stands discredited.

And caffeine’s role as an anti-depressant is gaining greater recognition. Two to three cups a day containing around 300 milligrams of caffeine can even have the effect of preventing suicides in certain cases.

Coffee, as everybody knows, prevents sleep (the Arabic word qahwa literally means "one that prevents sleep"). And the effects of coffee last far longer than what people commonly assume. It takes the body three to six hours to get rid of half the caffeine consumed. Even after you’ve dozed off to sleep coffee taken at dinnertime can interfere with REM cycles, making sleep less restful.

Coffee is a colonic stimulant, which means it causes the stomach to empty faster without affecting the rate of digestion. Current medical opinion does not rate it a health hazard.

Is caffeine addictive? Those accustomed to but deprived of it, report irritability, nervousness, restlessness, and an inability to work well. A common complaint is headache; dull or severe, short-lived or persisting over the day. And this headache eases with the intake of caffeine. No wonder so many headache remedies include caffeine.

Caffeine use seems to fit several parameters of drug addiction: compulsion to continue use, tolerance for the drug, and the withdrawal syndrome.

And too much coffee brings on "caffeinism", a condition characterised by anxiety, irritability, nervousness, lightheadedness, and even diarrhoea (coffee is a mild laxative). Caffeine dependence makes drinkers rely on a regular fix to ward off fatigue and headaches and to increase concentration. Kicking a coffee habit can be hard for heavy consumers— in the worst cases it can cause withdrawal symptoms similar (though less severe) to those from quitting more serious addictions.

If caffeine is addictive, coffee drinkers still have a route open to them, and that is of the decaffeinated coffee. Now more than 20 per cent of the coffee consumed in USA is decaffeinated. It’s another matter, most of the decafs taste terrible. Industry is now coming up with chemical processes that leave the decaf with a more acceptable taste, such as the chemical process of methylene chloride or the latest one of using supercritical carbon dioxide.

On the other hand, coffee is making inroads into ice creams, yogurt and confectionery. More and more concoctions come laced with coffee.

Mankind’s love affair with coffee seems set to continue, notwithstanding all those debates on the health risks involved. Indeed a new coffee chic is developing: fancy coffee bars, impressive coffee-making machines, and the rising demand for pricey coffees.