Drinking coffee offers no real benefit, say eggheads Deluded academics in the UK and Germany have produced "research" purporting to show that coffee drinkers receive no tangible benefit from their morning cup of beautiful, life-giving beany caffeine goodness. The foolishness was presided over by Peter Rogers of Bristol Uni's experimental psycho department. He and his allied …
Fresh ground coffee tastes nice. Decaff coffee(and tea) tastes wrong. Drinking something that tastes nice in the morning is better than drinking something that tastes wrong, and puts me in a better mood. If they can make a decaff that tastes as good as Blue Mountain, or Kona, or even Lavazza, I'll give it a whirl. Until that day my Bialetti will be serving unnecessary and ineffective stimulants.
Now, as for "alchohol-free beer" let me tell you.....
Blue Mountain? Seriously? Isn't that......instant?
Sorry but anyone who drinks instant and claims any kind of authority on "taste" deserves to be slapped with a wet herring.
Any coffee lover knows the only way to drink coffee is to buy beans, keep 'em in the freezer, grind them on demand and use a proper pressurized espresso maker. Anything less is bleurgh. Instant doesn't even qualify to be called "coffee".
I wonder if you eat instant mash and have Angel Delight for dessert?
Blue Mountain here I believe is referring to Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee which comes in bean form and is considered some of the finest in the world by a lot of people. Personally I think it's the scarcity equals value thing but I digress.
FROZEN BEANS. GTFO with that. Cool, dry, drak and preferably vacuum sealed.
Pressurized? God help you if that means a steam driven machine! Trust me you will burn in hell (much like your coffee) if that's what you recommend.
The price of Blue Mountain makes it the most faked coffee in the world. I've read estimates that up to three quarters of the stuff purporting to be BM is not. But since it's so scarce and so few people have drunk the real thing, most people would not be in a position to tell the difference.
Still, at least it hasn't been crapped out by cats
Not bothered about coffee, never have been. Decent tea however.....
I do drink coffee, loads of it. The only reason for this is that most offices will provide something that tastes fairly coffee-like and while I can tell the difference between decent coffee and crap, I'm not too bothered as I don't actually like it anyway.
Office tea on the other hand tastes like someone's boiled up the contents of the nearest hoover bag and pissed in the end result to add colour.
I'll agree it's massively overpriced, but I think that applies to most luxury brands - whether it's coffee, whisky, cars, whatever.
I just like it - probably there's a small section of my brain that says "after shelling out that much, you're going to like it, whether you like it or not!"
All the best.
Scorn and derision for actual science? That's a bit lame, Reg'. Your reporting is also a bit patchy, as I believe that the research shows that it does have benefits: But only for those who use it when they need it, and aren't already addicted and using it constantly.
I'm a coffee addict, and I'm certainly not more awake and alert than my non-addicted co-workers and friends. And when deprived of coffee, I'm a darn sight worse: My weekends devolve into dozing and massive withdrawal headaches if I forget to have three or four cups before midday.
It's a dependency. It doesn't help me out-perform everyone else; it just helps dredge my performance up to normal levels again. Which is exactly what this and other studies have shown.
Lewis' article is not derisive simply nicely ironic. But you obviously don't appreciate the difference.
@Lewis lovely stuff. But what's that big word in the article? Is it another attempt by so-called scientists to bamboozle us with jargon while they are lying through their climate-changing and presumably pearly white teeth?
I'm not sure if the article is in fact ironic. It is certainly comic, as Lewis often is. In this article he seems to employ classical techniques of irony but for some reason, it doesn't strike me as being 'ironic'. I'll get another cafetiere brewed mug of Cost-Rican down my throat and try reading it again.
I never noticed the caffene lift, and reckoned it was all bollocks, being a 20 cup a day man since i was knee high to a plectrum.
then I got me one of them there esspresso machines...
Still kepy my old 'fat bastard' size mug.
drining 4 or 5 pints or esspresso a day for a week dont half impinge on your perception of the world!
also makes ones teeth itch
Certainly a good idea to dose the neurons with stimulants before approaching keyboard.
The irony is in the mock outrage on the scientific value of the report which so angered our HYS friend. It's a sort of post-modern, Ben Eltonish irony but, as it still puts interpretation at a distance to experience, it is still irony. The more traditional irony is the lampooning of the science rather than the questionable value of this supposedly new investigation into established fact - the body develops tolerance to stimulants.
Much as I hate pointless studies I actually agree with this one. You only get any benefit from caffeine if you drink it very rarely. Try not consuming caffeine for a few weeks to completely detox from it and then have a nice triple espresso, it leaves you bouncing off the walls. Just like a first cigarette leaves you dizzy and feeling queasy but your body soon gets used to it.
Not that it'll stop me from drinking coffee.....
A colleague is a real caffeine junky - drinks red bull* and Irn Bru* like it's going out of fashion. One Saturday, after a heavy Friday night, he got through four cans of Red Bull in just a couple of hours and scared the shit out of himself. The shakes carried on most of the day.
So, he cut it out. Within three or four days he said he genuinely felt fantastic - even in the mornings. And he is most definitely NOT a morning person!
Of course, as I look across now, he's got a can of Red Bull on the go.
* Other caffeine based drinks are available.
It sounds like your colleague was getting off on that other active ingredient in Red Bull, namely Taurine. Studies have shown that it can have psychoactive effects see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurine for a brief mention.
as a side note, I once drank a whole case of 24 Red Bull in the space of a couple of hours, and was tripping my box off.
Agreed - excellent article. I noticed only a small touch of editorial bias.
"their morning cup of beautiful, life-giving beany caffeine goodness."
and
"The foolishness was presided over by Peter Rogers of Bristol Uni's experimental psycho department. He and his allied truth-deniers wrote:"
Psycho dept? Superb!!
Off for my next cup of beany goodness, although I might cook them, then grind them into powder first before infusing with boiling water. Actually - if they're a powder form, cut out the middle man, ahem <sniff> <sniff>?
...when coffee was first introduced to Europe there were many attempts to ban it. Much of the government's fear of coffee was more about the (subservisive) conversations in the coffee houses than the drug itself.
Today, my coffee connection ships me 2 pounds every month, still hot from the roaster when packed.
Tip: Always buy whole beans and grind just before brewing.
Without coffee, there would BE no IT. (we need a coffee icon)
1) So those people that get tachycardia from drinking too much caffeine are imagining things, as are heart monitors attached to said persons?!?!
2) I thought academia was facing budget cuts, surely this sort of time wasting would be a great one for the chop, as who really needs a Dept of pointless research anyway?
"The team asked 379 adults ... to give up caffeine for 16 hours"
... which naturally gave the non-bean-lievers an advantage right from the start.
We who are wise in the ways of espresso are well acquainted with its life-enhancing properties. However, we also accept that they come at a price: the constant need for a refill. Laying off for 16 hours is just not playing fair.
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