You Can Drink Your Coffee Totally Guilt-Free Now

Chances are you've heard both sides of the coffee debate: The stuff has been both applauded as medicinal and condemned as toxic, depending on the source (and whether he or she is properly caffeinated).

But Aaron Carroll, a professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine and health research blogger at The Incidental Economist, is taking a stand in a recent New York Times article:
"It's way past time that we stopped viewing coffee as something we all need to cut back on," he writes. "It's a completely reasonable addition to a healthy diet, with more potential benefits seen in research than almost any other beverage we're consuming. It's time we started treating it as such."

Carroll isn't saying that people should feed coffee to kids, chug it throughout pregnancy, or down sugar-ladden trentas all day. (Large amounts of caffeine can make kids and adults jittery, and may have adverse affects during pregnancy, while sweetened coffee drinks can contribute lots of empty calories to your diet.) The point is that the biggest scientific studies suggest that coffee guilt (i.e., feeling bad about how much java you drink) is unfounded — that most people who drink moderate amounts of coffee (usually three to five cups a day) tend to have a lower or no greater risk of risk of heart disease, liver disease, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, many types of cancer, and death. In other words, any coffee guilt you carry would be better applied to your mounting Starbucks bills.