Coffee drinkers unite: It's good for you!

Several exclamations crossed my mind, “I knew it!” being the first. “I could have told you so,” also slipped into my response mechanism. In the end, a simple “All right!” did the trick.

My joy was probably shared by others like me when the scientific report appeared suggesting that coffee is higher in healthful antioxidants than any other drink or food in our diets.

As many people know, antioxidants are found in grains, tomatoes, vegetables and fruits. As they may not have known, antioxidants also abound in coffee. Among other medicinal benefits, antioxidants are believed to be cancer fighters.

Can this be true? Drinking coffee is healthy?

As a coffee drinker, I’m elated. For as long as I can remember, so-called experts have tried to blame coffee for causing everything from anemia to zits. As hard as it may be for some to believe, these recent research findings offer proof that, rather than being harmful, coffee may be good for us. All right!

The research findings were from Joe A. Vinson, a chemistry professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, and his results were released at the convention of the prestigious American Chemical Society in Washington, D.C. So far, I haven’t heard any prophet of doom discrediting the report.

Not even a devout morning coffee drinker like me will advocate giving up fruits and vegetables because I load up on on caffeine. No, coffee doesn’t contain the other nutritional values of these foods. It’s just that the same folks predicting vile outcomes for coffee drinkers are related to those who have flip-flopped on eggs.

At the present time, I believe eggs are supposed to be good for us. Eggs have gone from healthy to unhealthy and back to healthy. If eggs have moved back to unhealthy, I haven’t heard about it.

You may remember a time when oat bran was thought to be the answer to just about every nutritional need we might have. Where are we now on the oat bran spectrum? The last I heard about oat bran was that it won’t hurt you.

Added to the antioxidant discovery are recent research findings in Japan that show regular coffee drinkers are less likely to contact liver cancer than non-coffee-drinkers. Harvard researchers have apparently found that men who drink six cups of caffeinated coffee per day reduced their risk of Type 2 diabetes by 50 percent; women’s chances were lowered by 30 percent.

It’s an added benefit that coffee may actually be healthy. I drink it because it kicks me into gear in the morning. If enough minutes in the morning pass without a cup of coffee, whatever the reason may be, I develop a headache. Some might suggest the headache is an active imagination reacting to no coffee. Not so. When I have unknowingly drunk decaffeinated coffee, it is the headache that lets me know I haven’t had the real thing.

I know that for various reasons, some folks can’t drink caffeine. For them, decaf is available in a form tasting pretty much like the high-test variety. Some prefer their coffee with cream and sugar. As for me, I would prefer going without coffee, thereby facing the dreaded morning headache, than to create a mocha mess out of a good cup of coffee. But if that gets the body upright and running on all cylinders, then I say go for it.

As I sip my morning coffee, I take comfort in the knowledge that, as an average adult, I consume 1,299 milligrams of antioxidants daily. This compares to 292 milligrams from tea, 76 from bananas and 48 from corn.

I am not about to make the foolish assumption that I can give up fruits and nuts and other healthy stuff, but I’ll ignore the “coffee will kill you” doomsayers even more than usual.

Another cup? Of course.

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.

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