As an avid coffee drinker myself, I’ve noticed that those who favor other beverages often take issue with coffee — especially when they realize how much of it I drink. Of course, I do what any person who is secure in themselves and their decisions would do: I start an argument.

It goes something like this:

“Caffeine is like a drug, it’s a nasty habit.”

“Actually, there’s no concrete evidence coffee is bad for you.”

“Well, I’ve heard it is. You get addicted and you can’t function without it.”

“It’s better than energy drinks.”

I mean, come on. Who in their right mind could claim to be too health-conscious for coffee yet have no qualms with the added sugar and chemicals in those things? But that’s a story for another day.

The die-hard coffee advocates are almost as bad. The ones who watched one YouTube video that told them coffee is an antioxidant, and now they need to spread the gospel of their hard-earned knowledge.

Despite the lack of concrete proof, the number of people who are 100% convinced of coffee’s dangers or benefits is staggering. It’s time to get to the bottom of this once and for all.

Coffee makes you live longer

You’ve probably already heard the claims.

According to recent research from the European Journal of Epidemiology, drinking two to four cups of coffee a day can increase your life expectancy by up to two years. These results were found to be independent of age, overweight status, alcohol drinking, smoking status, and the caffeine content of the coffee.

Why? Nobody knows.

One suggestion is that focus and alertness could help, but I’m not sure this quite makes sense to me. Is the implication that people who don’t drink coffee simply aren’t alert enough to stop themselves dying early?

Even Harvard researchers admit that the reason coffee might be beneficial is unknown.

It’s also been suggested that coffee may increase life expectancy because the people who drink it the most tend to be affluent, educated, and middle-class. They live longer because of these factors, not because of the coffee.

Obviously, this makes some sweeping generalizations, but intuitively it makes sense. Coffee is the drink of choice for college students pulling all-nighters to power through their assignments and sleep-deprived professionals who needed to maximize their productivity.

Sleep deprivement and all-nighters might not scream ‘health’, but high wages and a college education do. The uncomfortable truth is that social status has a huge bearing on how long we live — and it’s one factor many studies don’t control for.

Too much of a good thing

One of the most heated discussions I had about coffee was with a friend whose brother had drunk coffee excessively and developed nerve problems. As soon as he quit the brown stuff, he was fine. Anecdotal evidence is usually the weakest type, but let’s see if there’s any basis to this claim.

According to the Mayo Clinic, consuming more than 500–600 mg of caffeine a day is associated with a range of symptoms including restlessness, a fast heartbeat, and muscle tremors. So my friend’s brother wasn’t the only one.

It seems logical to suggest that coffee can be good for you in small doses, but not if you go overboard. Sounds reasonable, right? The average amount of coffee consumed a day is around 300mg, which works out at around three cups — clearly, 600mg a day is a lot of coffee.

Yet I’m still not convinced that it’s this straightforward. Everyone can metabolize coffee at different rates; that’s why it’s not recommended for pregnant women or infants. The coffee dose that turns one person into a shaking mess is likely just perfect for someone else.

Plus, in the previous study, caffeine dose wasn’t even a significant variable in predicting how coffee affects us and our life expectancy.

Coffee isn’t coffee isn’t coffee

Maybe there’s some evidence that coffee can help you live longer, but there’s coffee and then there’s coffee.

There are the fresh coffee beans you buy in paper bags to grind and filter yourself. Then there’s the instant, freeze-dried variety that gets stored in plastic containers. I drink the latter.

As much as I want to, I can’t make myself believe that the type of coffee I’m drinking is doing wonders for my health: I’m consuming a highly processed item. But again, most studies don’t differentiate between the different types. Does that mean coffee in its raw form is so extraordinarily healthy that it counterbalances the negative effects of instant coffee?

My personal take

I’m yet to read an article that has fully convinced me of the health benefits of coffee — and, as a self-confessed coffee junkie, that’s not through lack of trying.

As the BBC say:

“The most rigorous scientific way to be certain that coffee could make you live longer would be to force thousands of people all over the world to drink it regularly while preventing many thousands of otherwise similar people from ever drinking coffee.”

I’m not going to hang around until someone does this.

For me, the takeaway is that coffee is pretty neutral. Even if it doesn’t increase life expectancy, it can’t decrease it much either — at least, not significantly. The positive benefits, like antioxidants, are probably outweighed by the negatives.

So, drink your coffee or don’t drink your coffee. I don’t care. But quit trying to justify yourself.