A coffee or three a day, may keep the Doctor away

It is a truth universally acknowledged that drinking too much coffee will give you a heart attack. Well, no. The research suggests it may do the opposite.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD), or “heart, stroke and blood vessel disease” according to the Heart Foundation, is a major cause of death in Australia and was responsible for 30 percent of all deaths in 2013.

Is coffee to blame?

There is no evidence that shows coffee causes or cures CVD. Any coffee school in Sydney or Melbourne will tell you that. The data shows that those who drink coffee have a higher chance of surviving heart disease or not getting it at all.

In May the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC), a non-for-profit organization founded in 1990, published a series of reports at EuroPRevent, the “showcase congress” of the European Association for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation, based on existing data stretching back to 1966. They found that those who drank…

• approximately 3 cups of coffee a day and had CVD had a reduced mortality risk (chance of dying) of 21 percent.
• between 3-5 cups a day had the best chance of not getting CVD at all.
• 3-4 cups were about a quarter less likely to get type 2 diabetes, which is typically associated with a higher CVD mortality risk.

Be still my beating heart

But who am I to tell you? You can go look up the data yourself at coffeeandhealth.org. They provide easy to access scientific research on coffee from around the world.

Want to learn how to make 3-5 coffees a day at a coffee school in Sydney? We can teach you and a fortnightly coffee subscription will supply you with the beans to do it.

At Black Market Roasters, we run the Coffee School in Sydney where we teach budding baristas the skills and latte art techniques they need to join this growing group of coffee nerds.

Zac Hambides