A widely reported study emerged this week, that drinking coffee can reduce your risk of dying from oral cancer. Not tea…not decaffeinated coffee, but good old-fashioned
caffeinated coffee.
According to the New York Times Well blog (and a variety of other news sources):
“Researchers studied 968,432 initially healthy men and women beginning in 1982. All completed questionnaires on health and dietary habits, including amounts of tea and coffee consumed, at the start of the study period. Twenty-six years later, 868 people had died of oral or throat cancer.”
Researchers have yet to determine if the risk of developing the cancer is reduced, orsimply the risk of dying from it.
Even the most conservative coffee drinkers, at just one cup/day reduced their risk by 25%. Moderate drinkers of 2-3 cups/day reduced their risk by 33% – heavier drinkers at 4-6 cups/day reduced their risk by 50%. Researchers controlled for factors such as smoking and alcohol consumption.
Researchers did not indicate if a preference for organic, fair-trade coffee, over coffee produced by other methods had a positive effect on health, but we know for a fact that it has a positive impact on your conscience, and on small local economies, including fair wages for workers who produce it.
