Drinking coffee for good health

In the 1970s and 1980s, coffee developed a reputation for causing all sorts of ills, from high blood pressure and cancer to miscarriages.

Coffee is a unique drink and could be regarded as a healthy beverage choice. If taken as black coffee, it virtually free of saturated fatty acids, sodium, and sugar.

It contains an insignificant amount of energy: 2 kcal/178-g serving. However, many consumers add sugar, milk or cream to their coffee. The amount of calories provided daily by sweetened coffee has been calculated as 130 kcal/day, which is less than half of the estimated 321 kcal/day is obtained from all sweetened beverages including soda and colas.

One cup of coffee (240 ml or 8 oz) contains about 181 of caffeine versus an average of 130 mg of caffeine in a cup of tea. The amount of theobromine in a cup of coffee was 28.9 mg, where as the amount theobromine is a cup of tea in a relatively higher concentration in coffee than in tea, have negligible antioxidant capacity.

The last ten year studies suggest a strongly protective effect of coffee against gallstone disease. In a 2000 Department of Veterans Affairs study of 8,000 whose diets had been tracked for 30 years, researchers found that coffee drinkers significantly reduced the odds of developing Parkinson’s disease.

Lancet, a British medical journal, published in 2002 a Dutch report that consumption of six or more cups of coffee pr day decrease the likelihood of developing Type 2 diabetes by 50 percent.
Drinking coffee for good health