Decades Old Fallacious Myths On Coffee and Chocolate-Flushed Down The Drain
Posted: Tuesday, August 30, 2011
by Joel Hendon
http://hebronics.org/index.html
For the most of my life I have been a coffeholic and chocoholic. I have been warned so many times that one or the other of those addictions would eventually do me in! Sometimes even to the extent that it worried me. But those addictions were stronger than my cigarette smoking. I quit cigarettes.
My very worst weaknesses and now they are both being exculpated! Tee-hee, chuckle, snort.
Coffee was another matter. My father drank coffee at every meal, but I did not like it as a youngster. When I entered the army in 1951, things were not as they are today in the military services where you have numerous options that you can choose from. In the army then, you had coffee! Some times at breakfast, we would have a half-pint of milk. Other meals, we sometimes had a strange juice drink of unknown content. I drank the milk when I had the opportunity but the alien juice liquid, I could not handle. The only alternative to this array, was water. I drank water a lot. But, I began drinking coffee with enough cream and sugar to disguise the coffee taste and I began to like it, and I grew more and more fond of it.
So, before my tour of duty expired, I was happily consuming loads of coffee and began to understand why my father had it at every meal. So I have been consuming chocolate regularly for over 65 years and coffee for almost 60. I am most thankful for those two things. I do not care for carbonated beverages, although there are a few that I can tolerate if the occasion necessitates it. I cannot stand the taste of tea, and only drink it when visiting and it is set before me without asking. It totally ruins my meal and then when I hurriedly drink it with hopes of enjoying some of the latter part of the meal, the hostess immediately pours me more!!! I become a dull and crabby guest.
I also do not like milk very well anymore, although I once thought that was the only liquid one should ever drink. But to shorten this boring dialogue, I have simply turned into a coffee fiend, and a chocoholic. Permanently. And simply accepted my fate of dying from one or the other, or both! But Eureka! Good news began to surface.
A growing body of research shows that coffee drinkers, compared to nondrinkers, are less likely to have type 2 diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and dementia plus, have fewer cases of certain cancers, heart rhythm problems, and strokes. (Egad! :oD)
“There is certainly much more good news than bad news, in terms of coffee and health,” says Frank Hu, MD, MPH, PhD, nutrition and epidemiology professor at the Harvard School of Public Health (WebMD:Coffee and Your Health)
And that is only a bit from one article, there is more info there and many other articles which add credence to these remarks.
And in recent years, there have been a number of researchers starting to toot the horn of chocolate. They have primarily indicated that an ounce or so of dark chocolate would help lower your blood pressure (At age 80, my blood pressure averages about 105/65 which may not be caused at all by the chocolate…but I like to think so) and lower your bad cholesterol by some 10%. That is good news yet it doesn’t justify my amount of chocolate intake. But I want you to read this which I discovered only this morning!
Yes, it's true, a new study from the British Medical Journal (BMJ) finds that eating a large amount of chocolate may lead to a 33% lower risk of developing heart disease. Read this blurb:
They found that the "highest levels of chocolate consumption were associated with a 37 per cent reduction in cardiovascular disease and a 29 per cent reduction in stroke compared with lowest levels". (ZeeNews.India.com)
The article gives many more details of the study, and it adds credence to the previous studies which showed advantages by the small amounts of dark chocolate. However, this study, made no distinction as to dark or light chocolate, nor whether it was in candy form, drink or any other type. The only caution they made was that chocolate is high in calories and enough consumption could add damaging weight to one.
So there!
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)Joel,
I loved this and just commented on another article this morning about chocolate -- different place. I, too, am a coffee and chocolate - holic. However, I am quite confident that they were talking only about dark chocolate because it has substantially less sugar. (Milk chocolate hurts my teeth; dark chocolate doesn't.) My mom always prayed that there would be dark chocolate and raspberries in Heaven. I would agree but I would have to add coffee to that wish!
Thanks for a great article.
NancyHi Nancy, thanks for reading and commenting on my article. But no, the article and the research done this time, included chocolate of any type. I'll see if I can still install the URL to the article above.Joel,
I never want to disagree with you but milk chocolate has much more sugar and fat and less of the positive effects that dark chocolate has. One would have to eat a lot more of it to get the benefits. Check out this article:
http://divatoolbox.com/health-wellness/food-nutrition/dark-chocolate-is-good-for-you-but-dont-run-to-the-candy-store.html
NancyOh I knew that, I wasn't meaning anything such as that. All Iwas saying was that in the study, they checked those who ate a lot of chocolate regardless of the type. The chocolate is what helps you, notr the sugar and stuff. But the chocolate is still in those others as well.You've got a point, Joel. Think I'll have a cup of coffee now!
I like them both too
Thanks Jack, I appreciate your comment. The older I get, it seems coffee is more important to me than ever before. The first finger on my right hand is getting a permanent cup handle curve. It will soon be worth nothing but for drinking coffee or pulling triggers.
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