[pkulak]

So, to summarize:

* People who drink coffee... enjoy drinking coffee, and seek it out, which bothers you.

* Some people (you in particular) have adverse reactions to stopping.

These two consequences _are_ shared by many addictive substances, but also by many other things, like water, or Grape Nuts, or human contact. I really don't see how it makes the thing automatically unhealthy. Like it or not, there's basically no evidence that coffee is unhealthy, and plenty of evidence that it may in fact be healthy.

[al_borland]

I would say what I've seen goes beyond simply liking coffee and seeking it out, which I tried to convey in the original comment. People enjoying coffee isn't what bothered me, it was the projection of the anxiety about where they were going to get it, that's what bothered me.

> plenty of evidence that it may in fact be healthy.

This was part of my point. I think a lot of the studies are have a bias as people are always looking to justify their heavy coffee drinking. Those studies often make for good headlines that get shared a lot by coffee drinkers.

When studies repeatedly come out about the health benefits of what is often seen as a vice, it's worth being a little skeptical. There are plenty of studies with questionable funding that are effectively marketing dressed up as science. We've seen this play out many times in the past.

> there's basically no evidence that coffee is unhealthy

This article we're discussing had a whole section on how caffeine affects the body, and it wasn't all positive. I'm not here to turn coffee into the new tobacco, I don't think it's that bad. However, I think it has a bigger impact on people's lives than they would like to admit, even if it is just that morning anxiety they have until their first cup. It's hard to see these things until you stop.

Even within the article itself there are contradictions.

It says this...

> The latest research indicates that consuming up to 400 mg of caffeine/day (equivalent to up to 5, 8-ounce cups of caffeinated coffee per day) is generally safe for most adults and appears to be linked to a lower risk of several cardiovascular conditions, including heart failure, heart disease and stroke in some individuals.

Then it says this...

> However, drinking more than 4 cups of caffeinated coffee a day may increase the risk of heart failure.

So more than 4 cups of coffee per day may increase the risk of heart failure, and this article is recommending drinking 5 cups.

It also talks about high blood pressure...

> In people with optimal blood pressure, drinking 1–3 cups a day was associated with an increased risk of developing high blood pressure, while drinking more than 3 cups per day was associated with a lower risk.

So we need to drink more than 3 cups to make sure we don't have high blood pressure, but if we drink more than 4 cups we're at a higher risk for heart disease.

What are we supposed to take away from this? It sounds like the data is all over the place.

[pkulak]

Yeah, good points. I was a bit snide in my original response, so I appreciate you looking past that. I had even had my coffee by that point, so no excuses!

I still stand by the assertion that coffee is probably, overall, healthy to drink, and at worst neutral. Which is very unique for a substance provably, physically addictive. But I also can't really argue with a decision not to drink it.