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there are a surprisingly large number of positive health benefits to drinking a moderate amount of it.
I find most of these studies are founded on bad or unreliable science. It's like the same people who drink a glass of red wine for their heart health. The same benefits are gained from eating grapes, but that's not as fun.
All health and human physiology is still just correlational on the micro scale. The scale of the benefits for coffee are so large (approaching 20% for things like reduced mortality rate) that it's pretty hard to imagine it's just a correlation. The inverse correlation also holds strongly true in that people who don't regularly consume coffee have a significantly higher rate of all-cause mortality. I think another thing is that people have actively searched for evidence of negative health consequences of coffee because intuitively it seems there 'ought' be. That study I linked to is a meta-analysis looking at a wide array of other studies and still seeing those strong correlations.
As for wine, you'd have to eat an obscene amount of grapes - likely in the hundreds - to get comparable benefits and some studies have shown the ethanol itself as a positive player though obviously in moderation.
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[–] middle_path ago
I find most of these studies are founded on bad or unreliable science. It's like the same people who drink a glass of red wine for their heart health. The same benefits are gained from eating grapes, but that's not as fun.
[–] rwbj ago
All health and human physiology is still just correlational on the micro scale. The scale of the benefits for coffee are so large (approaching 20% for things like reduced mortality rate) that it's pretty hard to imagine it's just a correlation. The inverse correlation also holds strongly true in that people who don't regularly consume coffee have a significantly higher rate of all-cause mortality. I think another thing is that people have actively searched for evidence of negative health consequences of coffee because intuitively it seems there 'ought' be. That study I linked to is a meta-analysis looking at a wide array of other studies and still seeing those strong correlations.
As for wine, you'd have to eat an obscene amount of grapes - likely in the hundreds - to get comparable benefits and some studies have shown the ethanol itself as a positive player though obviously in moderation.