Two
cups of
sweetened coffee a day helps you live longer.
Hodgson, F. (2022) ‘Two cups of sweetened coffee a day helps you live longer.’ The Mirror Available at: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/health/two-cups-sweetened-coffee-day-27121209 (Accessed: October 14, 2022).
Claim
Dubious nutritional advice is ubiquitous, particularly from sensationalizing media sources like The Mirror, where a recent article by Hodgson (2022) asserts two primary claims: that coffee reduces mortality, and that sugar enhances the benefits even further
Fact Check
Recent claims of coffee reducing mortality, particularly when sugar-sweetened, arise from Liu et al. (2022), a 171,616-subject UK Biobank survey finding that sugar-sweetened coffee reduced mortality by 29-30% versus 16-21% when unsweetened. These findings, and the general literature, clearly support reduced mortality associated with coffee. Yet neither support synergistic effects from sugar, which seems unlikely given how coffee likely reduces mortality Coffee is rich in caffeine, an adenosine receptor antagonist shown to increase physical activity (Doherty and Smith, 2005), and chlorogenic acid, an antiinflammatory and anti-hypertensive that attenuates type 2 diabetes by increasing both satiety (Schubert et al., 2017) and glucose metabolism (van Dijk et al , 2009). Both reverse endothelial oxidative damage, often caused by glucose (Higgins and Babu, 2013) That these benefits mostly relate to reducing intake/effects of glucose makes the possibility of benefits from added glucose difficult to swallow.
More likely, the observed mortality differences related to the drinkers, who for sugar-sweetened coffees were “likely to be male, from a lower social class, and current smokers and generally had less healthy diets” (Liu et al., 2022, p. 911). Any coffee in such a population would be more beneficial than in the healthier drinkers of unsweetened coffee, provided total sugar remained at/below recommended values, as in Liu et al. (2022) for ≤3 sugar-sweetened cups, around which mortality retreated toward baseline. This was not observed for unsweetened coffee regardless of amount. Hodgson (2022) should have considered these facts before misadvising readers to consume more glucose by adding it to coffee.
References
Doherty, M. and Smith, P.M. (2005) ‘Effects of caffeine ingestion on rating of perceived exertion during and after exercise: a meta-analysis.’ Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 15(2), pp. 69–78. 10.1111/j.1600-0838.2005.00445.x.
Higgins, J. P. and Babu, K. M. (2013) 'Caffeine reduces myocardial blood flow during exercise.', The American Journal of Medicine, 126(8), p. 730.e1–8. 10.1016/j.amjmed.2012.12.023.
Liu, D. et al (2022) ‘Association of Sugar-Sweetened, Artificially Sweetened, and Unsweetened Coffee Consumption with All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality: A Large Prospective Cohort Study.’
Annals of Internal Medicine, 175(7), pp. 909–917. 10.7326/M21-2977.
Schubert, M.M. et al (2017) “Caffeine, coffee, and appetite control: a review.,” International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition, 68(8), pp. 901–912. 10.1080/09637486.2017.1320537.
van Dijk, A.E. et al (2009) ‘Acute effects of decaffeinated coffee and the major coffee components chlorogenic acid and trigonelline on glucose tolerance.’ Diabetes Care, 32(6), pp. 1023–1025. 10.2337/dc09-0207.
End of Assignment