Beverage analysis finds coffee could extend life expectancy

A recent beverage analysis has found that drinking coffee could extend your life expectancy.

Scientists at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health along with the AARP found that coffee drinkers have a lower risk of death, with the study finding that people who drink at least three cups of coffee a day live longer on average than those people who don’t.

The comprehensive study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, looked at 400,000 Americans of both sexes (aged 50 to 71), following them from 1995-96 to the end of 2008 (or until they died during that time frame). They reported: "Relative to men and women who did not drink coffee, those who consumed three or more cups of coffee per day had approximately a ten per cent lower risk of death."

Researchers at NCI were unable to find any link between coffee drinking and cancer, and from their figures, it seems that coffee are more unlikely to die from lung diseases, heart diseases, strokes, infections and diabetes.

Dr Neal Freedman of the NCI said: "Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in America, but the association between coffee consumption and risk of death has been unclear. We found coffee consumption to be associated with lower risk of death overall, and of death from a number of different causes. Although we cannot infer a causal relationship between coffee drinking and lower risk of death, we believe these results do provide some reassurance that coffee drinking does not adversely affect health."

There are several areas of contention over the study's validity, such as the time frame in which it was conducted (only 13 years) and the wide variety of compounds in coffee (coffee contains more than 1,000 compounds) which could affect health.

Caffeine is the most studied compound, although the findings were similar in those who reported the majority of their coffee intake to be caffeinated or decaffeinated, which suggests there is no causal relationship.

Posted by Neil Clark