Can coffee make you live longer?

A couple of recent scientific publications looking at coffee drinking and mortality led to a few interesting conversations in the office. We particularly like the press release that states “People who consumed one cup of coffee a day were 12 percent less likely to die compared to those who didn’t drink coffee”, now I am no mathematician, but I’d say we are all 100% likely to die, that’s unless coffee is the holy grail.

Working in the area of food composition, other questions arise: Is there such a thing as a standard size of a European cup of coffee? There are so many different coffees, different brew methods and therefore different composition of bioactive compounds could that change the effect. Would a 20-minute walk be more beneficial than cup of coffee? Is there any evidence that coffee drinkers come from different socioeconomic groups than non-coffee drinkers?

 Science is great, but these papers show that in attempting to answer one question a cascade of other ones appear. And the headlines don’t always agree with what the authors intended, in this case ‘Drinking coffee reduces risk of death from all causes, study finds” used was not correct. Check out further information on the Science Media Centre page

So, can coffee make you live longer? I don’t know, it’s not my cup of tea

The original articles are:
• European study: ‘Coffee drinking and mortality in 10 European countries: A multinational cohort study’ by Marc J. Gunter et al. published in the Annals of Internal Medicine at on Monday 10 July 2017.
• American study: ‘Association of coffee consumption with total and cause-specific mortality among nonwhite populations’ by Song-Yi Park et al. published in the Annals of Internal Medicine on Monday 10 July 2017.
• Editorial: ‘Moderate coffee intake can be part of a healthy diet’ by Eliseo Guallar et al. published in the Annals of Internal Medicine on Monday 10 July 2017.
• Science Media Centre comments