Is it possible to see how much if any money was given to the committee from the coffee industry?<p><a href="http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/committee/#members" rel="nofollow">http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/committee/#members</a>
>it's unlikely to do anything other than make you more alert and awake.<p>I find that extremely hard to believe.<p>If I drink 5 cups of coffee per day I get heart palpitations, an upset stomach, and am extremely irritable in general. The same goes for my significant other.<p>I actually went to a heart specialist and wore a heart monitor for 48 hours last year because I was having an irregular heartbeat and would black-out occasionally after jumping up out of a chair. The diagnosis? I'm fine. I just need to ingest less caffeine.<p>I think I'll stick with my one cup per day, below average amount.<p>It's just enough to wake up me, keep me alert, without any of the negative effects that caffeine brings with it.
OTOH:<p><a href="http://www.inc.com/travis-bradberry/caffeine-the-silent-killer-of-success.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.inc.com/travis-bradberry/caffeine-the-silent-kill...</a><p>Claims: caffeine only improves mental performance in those habituated to caffeine, triggers body chemistry leaning towards fight/flight responses, disrupts sleep<p>None of this is necessarily at odds with the WaPo article, which appears to mostly claim that there are no increased mortality/chronic disease risks associated with high coffee consumption (and some decreased risk of diabetes/cardiovascular risk?).
Ha, I just noticed a referenced story below this one:<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/14/almost-half-of-the-world-actually-prefers-instant-coffee/" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/14/a...</a><p>Me too!<p>I used to hunt for freshly and properly roasted quality beans, and grind them myself before each brew, and all that.<p>What I have come to this this: few coffees compare to Nescafe Gold a.k.a. Taster's Choice.<p>Certainly nothing that you can order around town from places like ####bucks or whatever.<p>Those Nestle buggers have figured out how to make great testing freeze-dried coffee. And it's so consistent! I've drank the stuff under different names on different continents, and it's exactly the same. (Modulo minor variations like "blend" or "dark roast").<p>And it's so cheap and easy just to throw a teaspoon of brown powder into hot water. Why bother with anything else.<p>Whenever I happen to have a coffee somewhere (socially, since I'd never do such a thing by myself any more) I'm actually wishing that the damn slop was Nescafe Gold!
It's weird that the panel didn't take into account the harmful effects of disrupted sleep patterns. They did note a concern about the extra calories from milk and sugar added to coffee.
I was <i>just</i> debating whether to go out for coffee now, or in an hour. Now it is!<p>Most people I work with splash a lot of cream and sugar in their coffee - probably hurts the study.
I decided to give up caffeine. I used to drink a lot of tea. I thought maybe it was making me anxious + using caffeine as a stimulant is a zero-sum game.
If you are someone that doesn't eat many vegetables or take vitamins, I can see why coffee would be recommended. It does contain a very high amount of flavanols antioxydants...
I'm not a big fan of the caffeine however.
Tomorrow there will be a study that says coffee is poison, and the next day it will be a miracle cure. It's difficult to take these arguments seriously when they're countered almost daily.<p>Life is about taking calculated risks. I prefer the moderation route.
If your sole purpose of drinking coffee is for the caffeine, caffeine pills are a great alternative. Sure there is a lot of negative stigmatism around pills in general, but they are significantly cheaper and more effective than drinking pure coffee.
This article doesn't mention quantity in standard unit like ml and doesn't mention that coffee shouldn't be adulterated with pumps of sugars.