Paul Sassone

A cup of coffee: friendly morning pick-me-up, or cauldron of death?

The former, I hope, since I am slurping a cup of coffee as I write this.

Coffee is good for us, I heard on the news last week. But, I remember other news items that once told us coffee was bad for us.

I don’t know which view is right. I’m not a health professional to be giving out health information on coffee, or eggs …

Speaking of eggs, I also heard last week that we now don’t have to worry about eggs killing us. We can eat as many as we want.

It is as a consumer of health information — and coffee — that I write.

What to believe? Is coffee friend or foe?

How would I know?

Whenever a study comes out about the health benefits, or health detriments, of some consumable, we scoff and say — Wait, a new study will show that pizza is nature’s most-perfect food and should be eaten three times a day.

Mostly, I think, we assume this attitude because we want to continue to eat and drink what we like.

And actually, we are happy and not perplexed when we hear science seems to give us contradictory information about the nutritional value of various foods and drinks.

Thanks to science I no longer have to count the number of eggs I eat a week. But, then, I never did.

We do what we want and look for excuses to justify — if only to ourselves — our behavior.

What nags at me, though, is the thought that coffee may be good and bad.

In some ways drinking coffee may be beneficial. In some ways it may be harmful. Drinking coffee may be beneficial to some people, harmful to others.

The good or the harm also could have something to do with quantity, which, in turn might depend on who is doing the consuming.

This is not helpful.

The lack of absolute answers forces us to try to figure out as individuals what we should do — maybe even think, read or get medical advice.

I have a headache.

Wonder if it’s the coffee?

–Here’s to the health benefits of coffee … or not–