Hah! It's Not an Addiction--It's a Health Food!

As if you needed any more excuse to down coffee on a daily basis (make mine iced!), two mainly* Boston-based researchers in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, say: Yep, it's good for ya.

The NYTimes (citing the JAMA article) agrees:

Coffee is not usually thought of as health food, but a number of recent studies suggest that it can be a highly beneficial drink. Researchers have found strong evidence that coffee reduces the risk of several serious ailments, including diabetes, heart disease and cirrhosis of the liver.

It's particularly good in warding off the type 2 diabetes:

Larger quantities of coffee seem to be especially helpful in diabetes prevention. In a report that combined statistical data from many studies, researchers found that people who drank four to six cups of coffee a day had a 28 percent reduced risk compared with people who drank two or fewer. Those who drank more than six had a 35 percent risk reduction.

My hubby, the Ph.D. in applied math (mainly probability) says this is HUGE reduction in risk, not just one of those slight gains that often get overhyped in the press.

BTW, does it surprise you that most of the work was done in the Hub? We can't live without our joe! (Make mine iced!)

*JAMA author Affiliations: Department of Nutrition and Health, Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands (Dr van Dam); Department of Nutrition (Drs van Dam and Hu) and Department of Epidemiology (Dr Hu), Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Mass; Channing Laboratory, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass (Dr Hu).