Sometime in my late 30s I started appreciating more nuanced flavors, including black coffee, but mostly vegetables like green beans, tomatoes, asparagus, peas, carrots. Once that happened, I started realizing how much food is blasted with so much salt that obliterates said flavors.
I assume it's mostly normal, as a kid I found my parents tastes bland...ew who could eat vegetables by themselves with no seasoning? Well, me now apparently...
There was a time when my diet was consistently full of very sweet things -- in particular, with beverages: More soda? Another mocha latte swimming in sugar? Another quart of orange juice? Yes, please.
But also food: How can a person walk past a selection of fresh donuts without having one?
Eventually, for reasons that initially were budgetary more than anything else, I discovered some coffee that I really liked the natural flavor of at a local place. I started getting that -- plain, black -- instead of a latte, mostly because $2.10 is a lot less than $3.75.
That coffee was Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. This particular one had its own distinct, subtle sweetness that hit the spot for me and was part of a basically-daily feel-good routine for years until their roaster stopped selling it.
But by then, I was a black coffee convert. And I didn't even notice at the time, but I'd also stopped buying soda in bulk -- it became a rare entity in my life instead of a daily fixation.
I also stopped buying things like cookies and donuts. I began to skip the pie at gatherings.
That all happened in my 30s.
Nowadays, motivated only by what I feel like eating or drinking instead of some desire to make healthy choices or something, my intake is good-tasting spring water (the tap water here sometimes tastes of mud), decent black coffee, inexpensive tea, and [of course] beer.
My food has taken a turn for the bland, too.
I buy carrots and celery at the store to munch on, instead of a bag of cookies. Things like rice and beans and fish have an abundance of flavor that I wasn't able to appreciate before. For gatherings, I make a big relish tray full of fresh vegetables -- and I munch on them more than anyone else does.
I seldom buy breakfast cereal now, but I used to eat a lot of it -- and I'd load it up with more sugar. Last year I did buy some store-brand raisin bran but I found that it was too much of a sugar bomb to really enjoy as a meal. I couldn't make myself finish it; most of it wound up in the compost. (I did find some very plain bran flakes that I liked a lot better -- 12-year-old me would not have been impressed.)
This is all a bit weird to describe because the only deliberate decision involved was to try to save a bit of money on coffee-house coffee in my 30s.
But did that decision actually have anything to do with it? Or is this instead a tale as old as time itself, wherein: Tastes simply change?
(But yeah, I do enjoy an occasional sugar bomb. But only literally-occasionally. For instance: A single 12-ounce bottle of Coke is very nice sometimes. I probably drink as many as 2 or 3 of those in a whole year.)
We must be careful not to find ways to be judgemental whether intentionally or not, especially when something is non-harmful and helpful to their life. It’s not a good behavioural pattern.
Also I was obviously talking about behavioural patterns in general, not judging that specific persons behaviours. The fact that you’d take what you’re doing (being judgemental) and try and paint me unsuccessfully as doing the same thing is an extremely bad faith tactic, and reveals to everyone here that you know exactly what you’re doing here.
This isn’t reddit mate. Acting this way is not appreciated.
Before the grumpy start making noise, yes, I absolutely am addicted. If I miss two days, then I get a headache for three days. Still definitely worth it. Everybody should drink coffee. There is no good reason not to.
They absolutely shouldn't. Many people suffer negative side effects from consuming coffee even if they don't realize it, like anxiety and jitters. Consuming stimulants is also a bad idea if you already have high blood pressure or heart rate.
> The analysis found that participants with severe hypertension who drank two or more cups of coffee each day doubled their risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, compared to those who didn't drink coffee. Drinking just one cup of coffee or any amount of green tea – regardless of blood pressure level – did not raise the risk, the study showed.
https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/12/21/people-with-very-hi...
The more general inference everybody with any high blood pressure or health risk should avoid coffee is not supported by the bulk of epidemiological evidence: moderate coffee use appears at worst neutral for many people, possibly beneficial for some.
A comprehensive meta-analysis of decades' worth of cohort studies concluded that moderate coffee consumption (roughly 2-5 cups/day) was associated with a lower or neutral risk of cardiovascular disease overall (coronary heart disease, stroke, heart failure, CVD mortality) compared to no coffee.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3945962/
So drink up! Drink all the coffees! Unless you are a reply-guy with severe heart problems and an uncontrollable compulsion to drink mass quantities, then talk to a doctor first.
Also don't drink coffee if you don't like it, or you're a Mormon, a strict Seventh-day Adventist, a member of certain Pentecostal or Anabaptist groups, a Theravāda Buddhist monk, a strict Salafist, or part of a strict Ital-observant Rastafarian community. If in doubt, speak to your bishop, branch president, pastor, priest, imam, monk, or whoever guides your spiritual tradition.
In fact, so few spiritual traditions do forbid it, including the most forbidding and censorious, that it may well be considered miraculous. In my personal religion it is tantamount to a sacrament ;)
I didn't say it was bad for health as a general statement, I said that there are many people out there who suffer negative health consequences from caffeine consumption, in response to you telling everyone to drink coffee.
I actually like coffee, I have a fancy hand grinder and everything, my body just doesn't handle it well when consumed on a regular basis and I know people who've had to quit because it made their anxiety so bad that they started getting panic attacks. Telling "everyone" to drink coffee because there's no good reason not to is just wrong and careless and potentially dangerous.
"Not everyone should" != "nobody should"
> Everybody should drink coffee. There is no good reason not to.
Clearly there are many reasons not to drink coffee that may or may not apply to you and so saying that everyone should be drinking coffee is wrong.
So... if you want to cut back, just persevere for a few days of no coffee. The statistics don't lie.*
* sample size = 1
I'm basically a vampire now.
Where does that put me? Caffeine poisoning or immortality with no in between?
I reduced my coffee down to 1 espresso per day two months ago, and quit entirely two weeks ago. I'm still on stimulants, but Vyvanse treats ADHD much better and has fewer side-effects.
I think more people should give green or black tea a try, I found them to provide similar effects to coffee but with fewer side effects.
> basically a vampire now.
Do you mean 2-3 liters?
If you can't do that, I've heard of people adding a sprinkle of baking soda as a buffer to black coffee. I'm not sure how much you'd need, probably just a tiny amount that you'd barely be able to taste.
Maybe it’s unrelated, all in my head, better beans, or the 3-4 oz of whole milk, but maybe give espresso drinks a try if you haven’t?
If I drink coffee my digestive system revolts in the the most disgusting ways. I miss it terribly, but its just not worth it.
- drink some water before the coffee
- ideally, don't drink it on an empty stomach
- use a dark roasted coffee, they are softer on the stomach (and way tastier)
The cost of raw coffee has nearly tripled in 18 months, that's what's driven the price increases. That has not been due to the cost of processing and shipping so much as poor coffee growing seasons in major growing areas reducing primary production. Though growing, processing, and transport inputs have all suffered a lot of inflation in the past 5 years too, to be sure.
Brazil is generally known for mass production low quality coffee grown at a lower altitude, which might be what you find in a can like grandparent said, but is less popular in the more premium scenes.
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/6/1354
I only did a postgraduate degree, so I don't have the practice reading scientific studies to determine which is true. Maybe someone with more knowledge can chime in?
With that said, the fact that the other study seemed to find the opposite conclusion concerns me.
That said, instant coffee is just freeze-dried coffee. There's a possibility its effect is no different.
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/20...
> Assuming the meta-analyzed evidence from cohort
> studies represents life span–long causal associations, for
> a baseline life expectancy of 80 years, eating 12 hazelnuts
> daily (1 oz) would prolong life by 12 years (ie, 1 year per
> hazelnut), drinking 3 cups of coffee daily would achieve
> a similar gain of 12 extra years, and eating a single man-
> darin orange daily (80 g) would add 5 years of life. Con-
> versely, consuming 1 egg daily would reduce life expec-
> tancy by 6 years, and eating 2 slices of bacon (30 g) daily
> would shorten life by a decade, an effect worse than
> smoking. Could these results possibly be true?
Aside from that, I'd love to know how each of those items affects life quality. Living long is only a life goal up to a certain age, and from what I've seen around me, that age is very rarely 90.
It feels like trying to be immortal, which is a bit of a folly.
Anyway, the other day I noticed that Warren Buffett is just retiring at the age of 94. The man has eaten McDonald's for breakfast for much of his life. Diet cannot be that big of a deal.
What those epidemiological studies reveal is that food associated with higher class makes you live longer, which is reverse causation, at best.
Edit: i.e a bacon eater consumes a higher than average caloric intake, hazelnut eaters have more greens/vegetables in their diet possibly
That's not to say that these results might not be significant -- what you propose may be the case -- but I'd want to see an actual mechanism of action before buying something like this.
The inverse possibility--that nicotine, and perhaps caffeine as well, heighten the risk of psychosis in those genetially predisposed--has also been considered.
Incidentally caffeine calms me down as well.
Since then, I've walked a kinder, more compassionate path. I hope the same for you.
This confuses me. Aren't all the best degrees postgraduate degrees?
Over the NHS recommended limit is better than zero caffeine for everyone. If their limit is correct is in question
Whether "those with severe mental illness" get more benefit seems unlikely biologically. But like everyone coffee is good for you.
The only point of research like this, since we know coffee is good, is finding the mechanisms. But it's highly open to p-hacking/experimental error, which is how universities work now. You should default to this is citation farming.
The rest of the day is another story, every day! Hopefully one of the better stories.
It's a lot of blueberries. But I can afford $60/month in frozen blueberries. Plus they're tasty. Also antioxidants or whatever.
What about decaf only; 0.3% coffee?
Is decaf linked to slower biological aging, too?
I think most baristas who do it for more than a year or two learn to not primarily be a coffee factory but first to make a positive impact on the people they see. The coffee is something that can be made consistent (and in a way, boring) through practice, but personal connection, especially when it is genuine, has a real draw.
All of these studies are hot garbage, hopelessly confounded, the biggest scam in science is "controlling for".
Do an RCT and watch the coffee magic evaporate.
>Our study suggests the importance of further research investigating the role of coffee consumption in biological ageing.
And care takers when you are really bad will hand you coffee but not beer. Etc.
Just annoyed that studies like this get so much attention compared to studies that provide more value.
renewiltord•2mo ago