Is coffee good or bad for your health?

Moderate coffee intake - about 2-5 cups a day - is associated with a lower likelihood of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and more.
While early studies on coffee suggested that it could lead to health problems, recent research provides compelling evidence that drinking coffee actually has a variety of health benefits.
"Overall, the evidence is quite compelling that coffee is beneficial rather than detrimental in terms of health," says Professor Frank Hu, head of the Department of Nutrition Science at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Hu points out that moderate coffee intake - about 2-5 cups a day - is associated with a lower likelihood of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, liver and endometrial cancer, Parkinson's disease and depression. Even coffee drinkers may have a reduced risk of early death.
Old studies have linked coffee to a variety of diseases, from heart disease to asthma. But Hu notes that many of the participants in those studies were also smokers, which may have led researchers to think that coffee was responsible for the adverse effects associated with cigarettes by modern science. He clarified that anything that people consume in large quantities is usually subjected to scrutiny.
"In the past, a lot of people thought, 'Oh, coffee tastes so good, there must be something bad in it,'" he said. "The good news is that for most people, coffee actually has health benefits." | BGNES