My wife grew up in Massachusetts, and her music teacher must have been a descendant of one of the original Puritan settlers. In chorus, the kids were taught a “coffee song,” which they sang , perhaps with fingers wagging, for the parents on recital night. The lyrics, approximately, were “C-O-F-F-E-E, coffee is not for me, it’s a drink that people wake up with, and it makes them nervous, it is a SIN…”

(Anyone else subjected to that song, incidentally? And no, she didn’t attend Catholic school. Public school preaching the sins of coffee!)

Coffee may make you nervous, but it’s not necessarily bad for you. If anything, a new study suggests that you should be drinking more coffee, not less:

In the new study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers found that healthy women who drank upwards of six cups of coffee per day were no more likely than abstainers to develop high blood pressure over the next decade.

On the other hand, women who drank coffee occasionally or in moderation — reporting anywhere from zero to three cups a day — had a higher risk of developing high blood pressure than the heavy coffee drinkers or the abstainers.

Inevitably, a contradictory study will come out next week, but in the meantime, espressos for all!

Of course, if you drink your coffee Dunkin’ Donuts style, with a 1:1:1 ratio of sugar to cream to coffee, you may not be doing yourself any caloric favors. But don’t blame the brew itself. — MARK ASHLEY

Healthy coffee lovers, drink up! [CNN]
(Photo: Ahmed Rabea)

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