Coffee Good for You this Week
It seems that every week popular opinion vacillates between coffee being healthy ambrosia and coffee being toxic waste. This week, it seems, coffee has been given a nod for it’s health benefits so we all can drink our cuppa with assurance of good health. Until next week, of course, when we will be required to run around in circles screaming.
According to THIS ARTICLE coffee is actually the primary source of anti-oxidants in the diets of US citizens. Now, just what does that say about our diet? According to the various food pyramids out there, we should be getting several servings of veggies, fruits and nuts every day. Every single day we need to be shoveling the good stuff into our mouths. Do we? Or do we rather stuff our mouths with a burger on the way from work to little Dolly’s school play, or a egg muffin while we’re running late to work? And yet, there always seems to be the ubiquitous cup of coffee, made for us automatically by our fancy timed makers or picked up at the drive-thru. Is that a bad thing? Well, this week, not quite so. But I’m sure next week people will frown on coffee again as some critical report comes out. For a week. Until the next report comes out proclaiming the virtues of coffee once again.
It’s a bit of an emotional roller-coaster, donchathink? This week I’ll be eagerly grinding my beans and brewing the liquid gold and imagining those cute little anti-oxidants anti-oxidating thru my body. Drinking the warm brew in all it’s goodness and celebrating a beverage that has many hundreds of years of history. Next week, when the opposite report comes out, I’ll be cowering in a corner somewhere, wracked with guilt and sadness as I take a sip then beg for forgiveness, then take another sip. And the week after that, I’ll be on cloud nine again, giving thanks for the God-given joy that is found in coffee. Whew, it’s a lot of work. Makes me want to sit down and have a cuppa. Okay, please read sarcasm in there. These reports no longer hold much use for me except for amusement and wondering where all the money is coming from for all these different and disparate studies.
Of course, there is sanity in all of this. It’s been demonstrated that sucking down too much water will kill you. The word for the week is moderation. Why do you drink coffee? If it’s to stay awake, then you got another problem altogether. GET SOME SLEEP! We are one of the most sleep deprived cultures on the face of this Rock. Coffee needs to be a part of your diet for the pleasure of a good cup – not something you have to have to keep from nodding off and drooling on your keyboard. If you are an underpaid driver keeping two logs, I can empathize. However, coffee can only keep you awake – it can’t keep you aware. Our awareness is still affected by the lack of sleep no matter how many cups we’re buzzing from. Sleep deprivation is like being drunk. Our decision-making abilities are affected, our attention to detail is impaired and our situational awareness is severely impacted and the only thing coffee is going to do is keep your eyes open for a little while longer. Stop it – get some sleep! Then enjoy coffee for the wonderful and healthy drink that it is, and in moderation. And imagine all that anti-oxidating you’re getting while you do.
MikeV