Correction, caffeine (can) be good for you, but in normal amounts and it has diminishing returns. That’s not how most consume it. Most outright abuse it. It should never be illegal, but it being pushed as “healthy” is also a stretch.
However, the amount regularly consumed by US adults on average is 135 mg or 1.5 cups, which is well below the maximum recommended dose of 400 mg or 4 cups of coffee per day, which is in itself a conservative estimate as with all official guidances. To put that into perspective, but by no means to compare it with long-term consumption, you’d need to drink about 10 g in 100 cups in one sitting to reach toxic levels.
Surprisingly enough, and just to entertain the idea, there are some instances of increasing returns from a higher caffeine intake. A modest calorie burn for weight loss from caffeine would require 6 cups on average, which–although a large amount and not generally recommended–is still clinically safe to consume. An increased intake is also associated with a lower risk of gallstones. Even the American College of Cardiology has published a note encouraging users to drink more than the average nationwide to reap the benefits. Other sources put that number at 3 cups daily. And although moderate drinkers of 3-5 cups per day show a 15% reduction of cardiovascular disease, heavy drinkers of 6 cups or more per day are neither associated with an increase nor decreased risk. I even remember reading at some point that heavier users become more resilient to caffeine’s cardiovascular effects than casual drinkers but my Google-fu was not strong enough to recover the source but I’ll edit if I stumble across it.
So there you have it. The window of what’s considered a low risk or healthy intake of caffeine is much wider than what’s generally expected. In fact, it can be used and it’s recommended as a prophylaxis for certain conditions without a significant tradeoff in healthy adults, and there’s plenty of evidence to support that.
And no, this wasn’t paid by big coffee, but if you know that they’re hiring, send them my info.
Correction, caffeine (can) be good for you, but in normal amounts and it has diminishing returns. That’s not how most consume it. Most outright abuse it. It should never be illegal, but it being pushed as “healthy” is also a stretch.
With so many health benefits and mild side effects, it’s hard to say that it’s unhealthy when it protects you from various serious conditions. It can most definitely be part of a healthy diet.
However, the amount regularly consumed by US adults on average is 135 mg or 1.5 cups, which is well below the maximum recommended dose of 400 mg or 4 cups of coffee per day, which is in itself a conservative estimate as with all official guidances. To put that into perspective, but by no means to compare it with long-term consumption, you’d need to drink about 10 g in 100 cups in one sitting to reach toxic levels.
Surprisingly enough, and just to entertain the idea, there are some instances of increasing returns from a higher caffeine intake. A modest calorie burn for weight loss from caffeine would require 6 cups on average, which–although a large amount and not generally recommended–is still clinically safe to consume. An increased intake is also associated with a lower risk of gallstones. Even the American College of Cardiology has published a note encouraging users to drink more than the average nationwide to reap the benefits. Other sources put that number at 3 cups daily. And although moderate drinkers of 3-5 cups per day show a 15% reduction of cardiovascular disease, heavy drinkers of 6 cups or more per day are neither associated with an increase nor decreased risk. I even remember reading at some point that heavier users become more resilient to caffeine’s cardiovascular effects than casual drinkers but my Google-fu was not strong enough to recover the source but I’ll edit if I stumble across it.
So there you have it. The window of what’s considered a low risk or healthy intake of caffeine is much wider than what’s generally expected. In fact, it can be used and it’s recommended as a prophylaxis for certain conditions without a significant tradeoff in healthy adults, and there’s plenty of evidence to support that.
And no, this wasn’t paid by big coffee, but if you know that they’re hiring, send them my info.