Stop all the clocks, push aside everything you know: coffee, or as doctors like to call it 'the devil's morning juice that will kill you dead' is actually not all that bad for you. In fact, you can have up to five cups a day and still reap the nutritional benefits.
Every day there's new, dubious and conflicting studies saying 'Ooh one cup of coffee a day will give you toe cancer' and 'Oooh actually you can have thirty cups of coffee in two hours and upgrade yourself to the next level of superpowers'. But this advice? It comes straight from the mouth of a nutritional research scientist from Harvard. Yeah. We're going to say that again; Harvard.
Vasanti Malik, a research scientinst at the Harvard T.H. Chan of Public Health - the school currently ranked second by the U.S. News & World Report - did an AMA on Reddit the other day and, amongst fielding other far more important questions on the impact lobbyists have on government-set dietary requirements (answer: a lot) and the main reason behind the obesity epidemic (answer: increasing portion sizes and, sigh, refined sugar), she also took a question on coffee.
User Fart_joke(yep) asked Vasanti what she thought about coffee as people keep telling him it 'affects the lining of your stomach and its ability to consume nutrients'.
Vasanti replied that there's no evidence she's aware of to suggest that the stomach lining can be affected negatively by coffee intake. In fact, she says, coffee, a lot of it, can actually be good for you!
'Provided that it is minimally sweetened with sugar and not loaded with whipped cream can definitely be part of a healthy diet. Coffee whether its caffeinated or decaf contains a number of healthful vitamins and nutrients and findings from our studies have shown associations with reduced risk for diabetes, cardiovascular disease and mortality.'
Here's the good bit:
'Benefits are seen up to about 5 cups per day, after that there does not appear to be any additional benefit.'
Hear that guys? Five cups. Go nuts. But not too nuts, you might find yourself bouncing off the walls.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.