Coffee and health used to be a controversed theme in
seventies. Nowadays, moderate coffee consumption is rather exonerated from its supposed negative long term effects upon health.My mother used to be one of those persons who teaches her offspring, in its early ages, that coffee is not bad. It is bad bad bad! In consequence, I managed to keep away from coffee. At least untill difficult age of 10, when, as I remember, I was permitted to join mother and neighbour-friends at coffee-tattle table.
That was moment I started to exercise my taste buds on coffee. In those days, I remember developping a partiality for coffee with milk. Or should I say milk with coffee... However, I know now that coffee I was drinking back then was indeed, not so good. Preground, over boiled, sometimes brewed over grounds from other day, could you think of worst? No wonder I wanted to hyde those hideous characteristics with tones of milk.
In meantime, I probably took a good sip of coffee on road and woke-up to a much more pleasant reality. Coffee is not bad. It is good good good. But why are there so many voices whispering that coffee and health don't go well together? Caffeine
Call it food or beverage, coffee is free of any nutritional value, and, as indecent as it may sound, we consume it exclusively for pleasure.
Yes, caffeine content in coffee is partialy responsible for that pleasure. Caffeine acts as a mild stimulent over central nervous system, that results in better memory, better judgements and ideea-associations, better moovement-coordination.
A single serve espresso contains somewhere among 80 and 120 milligrams of caffeine. A normal cup of coffee (even drip coffee) contains about 100 - 150 milligrams of caffeine. This is what commonsense calls moderate consumption at one sit. Within several hours (varying from one person to another) caffeine is eliminated from body. Refering to average coffee drinker again, s/he can have three or four sips (servings) of coffee every day aside from any health risk.
The thing about coffee is quite same as with other foods and beverages. The effects vary with dosing: moderate can be medicine, too much can be poison. The average coffee drinker can experience nocive effects after ingesting 550 milligrams (women) and 700 milligrams (men) at one sit. These effects reffer to headaches, nausea, petulance. The caffeine overdose is beeing speculated around 10 grams. I say, it would be impossible to reach it exclusively by drinking coffee, as you should ingest 100 cups at one sit. However, if you succeed, it may be last thing you'll ever do.
