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Drink Decaf and Die
jose parinas writes "Decaffeinated -- not caffeinated -- coffee may cause an increase in harmful LDL cholesterol by increasing a specific type of blood fat linked to the metabolic syndrome, hints a new study presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2005."
From the article:
quote:
"Whether coffee has caffeine is not the only thing that differentiates caffeinated from decaffeinated types," Superko said. "Caffeinated and decaffeinated coffees are often made from different species of beans. Caffeinated coffee, by and large, comes from a bean species called coffee Arabica, while many decaffeinated coffees are made from coffee Robusta. The decaffeination process can extract flavonoids and ingredients that give coffee flavor. So decaffeinated brands usually use a bean that has a more robust flavor."
/ end quote
Robusto is named not because it has a more robust flavor than Arabica, but because it is a hardier species. In fact, the taste of robusto coffee is so heinous that only people without the sense to drink freshly ground coffee are susceptible to this travesty. I suppose that also includes decaf drinkers, but it also includes those who drink freeze dried coffees and mass produced brown powder that comes in cans.
To be blunt, Starbucks coffee would actually be a step up in quality from robusto beans.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
This is the last straw - I quite drinkng tea and coffee because caffeine is bad for health, quite smoking because nicotine is bad, quite drinking soft drinks because sugar and all that stuff that makes the drink fizzy is bad for you, and now freaking decaff has been sliently killing me. From now on, all bets are off, I'm just going to smoke crack and to hell with the consequences.
For instance coconut water is better than Soda, Old Coke is better than New Coke, Coffee is better than the decaf crap.
Scientists are re-discovering that age-old medicines like Turmeric, etc., are in fact much safer and healthier than the new fangled ones on market today.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Life could be more a matter of equilibrium. It is known that a small quantity of caffeine is not poison for our bodies rather it has a number of good effects on it.
When we start to do things out of the equilibrium, the situations become unstable (as seen in physiscs).
It is the same as sugar, fat, proteins, vitamins alcohol and the likes.
Maybe the right move could be to get small amounts of plain coffee with a little of sugar (thus no sweeteners and no decaffeinated powders). If it is not healthy, it will be by little.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Things that have recently been found to have positive health properties: beer, chocolate, coffee. In moderation of course.
Personally I follow a very simple rule - eat and drink everything, just don't eat or drink too much of any one thing.
There was an interesting study recently - the French (yes, we hate them, yawn) apparently eat lots of stuff that is supposed to be bad for you, and yet remain healthy and slim. How do they do it? Basically, eat in moderation and don't snack between meals.
Everything in one way or another in some sort of situation or in excess is going to make us "die" ... but generally I don't see anyone a shortened life for the sole reason that they drank a cup of decaf every day or normal coffee for that matter.
Shame he's rarely funny.
How we know is more important than what we know.
There are documented cases where people have died from the ingestion of nicotine (generally in the form of nicotine pesticides). In adults, the lethal dose has been quoted as 40-60mg (although not well documented).
However with those facts aside, nicotine is of course not the only toxic chemical inhaled from cigarettes, so whether the cigarettes contain nicotine or not is moot. (yes, yes... I am aware the parent post is tongue-in-cheek, but have decided to answer to it anyway).
FTA:
The Coffee and Lipoprotein Metabolism (CALM) study included 187 people, randomized to three groups: one that drank three to six cups of caffeinated coffee a day; another that drank three to six cups of decaffeinated coffee a day; and a third, the control group, that drank no coffee.
IMHO, I don't think this is a large enough set to draw accurate data from, as an initial study, these results should lead to further tests - but it seems to me, too early to apply wide sweeping statements - hey, but this is what the press is good at - right?
Wasn't there a study a few years ago that proved oxygen was bad for us? increased radicals causing cellular breakdown and ageing... As a New Years resolution, try giving that up!!
To be is to do - Descartes. To do is to be - Sartre. Dooby dooby do - Frank Sinatra.
-- Bernard Bernoulli, on attempting to revive Dr. Fred Edison after rescuing him from the IRS.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I've always understood that the reason decaffeination removes flavour is that the caffeine tastes bitter. The solution is not to use different beans, but to roast a little darker to restore the strong bitter taste.
My favourite decaf comes from a little boutique that measures it out at the point of sale. Next to their darkest roast coffee, it is clearly even darker still!
I think the reason most decaf is so bad is that you have to get it pre-ground (even at restaurants and cafes) and thus it's stale and the wrong grind anyway, or else it's such a fringe item that it sits around longer on the shelf going stale between roasting batches.
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
You raise up a good point about stale coffee, which also may have some bearing on the study. From the article:
"In this study researchers gave participants a nationally popular home-brewed caffeinated coffee and decaffeinated coffee brand."
Granted, they wanted to do a study researching the health effects of regular versus decaffeinated coffee on the general population, so they went for what most people use, which is probably canned pre-ground. But it's probably a poor reflection of what fresher coffee does. Kind of like comparing the health difference of between boiled or steamed reconstituted dehydrated food.
Plus, drinking all that average coffee is most likely dampening their joie de vivre. I think that little things that brighten your day can have a lot of benefits, health-wise.
I read a newspaper article the other day decrying MacDonalds again - criticising their fruit salads. The article (in the UK Guardian as I remember) said that MacDonalds fruit salads had been bathed in artificial chemicals, and how dare MacDonalds feed such dangerous stuff to our children etc. etc. Reading futher into the article, the chemicals in question were citric acid and ascorbic acid (vitamin C).
This just in, being born will kill you. A study by like 10 bajillion genius Harvard researchers and shit said that 100% of people who are born, die. Scientists suggest that this is based on genes inherited from victim's parents and are working on a test to detect it.
Well, there is actually only once rule for food. The more it is processed the more likely it is that it is useless or even harmful for your metabolism. Our metablosism is just best adapted to that. Soylent Green is probably better for you than anything packaged from a supermarket. Eat the fattest meat, eat all fried, revel in carbs whatever. But don't eat it once a food corporation had it's chemistry fingers on it.
Just a reminder...the only plant fat that is solid in room temperature is coco fat. Can you imagine what chemicals are needed to turn plant fats into something you can put on your bread? Just eat butter instead.
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
Decaffeinated -- not caffeinated
thanks for that clarification!
my BMI is way over "reasonable" index, I drink beer, sometimes liquors, normal coffee, a range of foods including these rather unhealthy, don't move too much, yet my blood pressure is perfectly within norm, the "bad cholesterol" detector device displayed LO meaning the levels were undetectably low, I don't have any serious health problems... I wonder why :)
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Yep, some really nasty stuff, like, um, hydrogen.
Interesting that the decaf was only "theoretically harmful" to fatties. To normal or skinny people it has the reverse effect and the level of the naughty chemical dropped.
So maybe if you happen to be normal or skinny, decaf is even better for you than you thought.
Of course we puritanical vegan types aren't dying of a heart attack anyway because we barely eat enough saturated fat to make the cholesterol we need to bind our cells together (yay coconuts and avocadoes: necessary to bind our cells together).
Does anyone else have trouble actually bringing up the article without a bunch of stuff all over the top of it? (Say, in Firefox?)
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
I also try to do everything in moderation. I even moderate in moderation, so I end up doing some stuff to the extreme, just so I won't be an extremist at moderation, also known as an extremist moderationist. Or is that a moderate extremist. I give up, time for another cup of coffee.
Don't you know how dangerous that is? http://www.dhmo.org/
Parent replied:hydrogen
Problem is, once you bind the hydrogen it's trans fat and no longer vegetable oil - it's gone from super yummy and healthy to ugly grey goo that happens to be one of the unhealthiest things you can eat.
Personally, I prefer to make my sandwiches with hommus and dip my bread roll in fresh olive oil.
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
You don't drink decaf for the same reason as you don't eat yellow snow. They're both piss. End of story.
From Garfield sometime...
John walks into the room, yawning, and picks up a mug of coffee.
Garfield: No, don't do it John!
John takes a sip and promptly collapses, asleep.
Garfield: I warned you! That was decaf...
"Drink decaf and die"? Gee I wonder why Slashdot gets accused of headline sensationalism ...
Di-hydrogen monoxide is the main cause of death in drowning. Di-hydrogen monoxide, in large quantities, can harbour aggressive biological agents ("sharks") that can be lethal to your health.
More seriously, I was told some college students had a challenge on who could drink most water. Similar competition with beer normally result in someone dropping drunk, but with water no such effect appeared, of course. So, someone discovered the hard way that there is a lethal dose of water, about 20 liters, beyond which synapses lose their conductivity due to dilution, and you die of heart failure. Can't really be sure on most details and this could be a urban legend, but in general there is always a quantity of anything that will kill you.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
I beleive Starbucks was one of the first chains to insist on only selling Arabica beans. Its decaf coffees have always been made with Arabica beans. Basically Starbucks was a leading voice in the trade for discouraging the use of Robusta. You may not like Starbucks, but to criticize their large selection of various coffees as being second rate is barking up the wrong tree.
Can you imagine what chemicals are needed to turn plant fats into something you can put on your bread?
Water. Or some sort of gloopy liquid protein, like oh, maybe, egg. Then you'd need some kind of acid, like vinegar perhaps, and something to help nucleate the emulsion - maybe a tiny drop of mustard powder.
Congratulations, we've just invented mayonnaise
It all can be true. I don't know any dead people suffering from cancer, hunger or hemorrhoids.
"DRINK DECAF AND DIE!!"
When the hell did Rupert Murdoch buy Slashdot?!!
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
I hope they won't research my third addiction. I haven't spend years building my porn collection just to hear it's unhealty.
*clicks link*
PFFFFFT!!! (spits out water)
It is a common misconception that darker, stronger coffees have more caffeine. Actually the lightest roast coffees have the most caffeine. In fact espresso roast, pound for pound, has less caffeine than regular coffees. It is only the brewing process that makes the drink more caffeinated than regular coffee. This fact doesn't contradict you're theory, but you might find decaf roasted dark for reasons other than flavour
Attention !
Not all decaf process use chemicals. Some only use water to remove the caffeine, yes, just water.
If you read the article carefully you will see that they don't link the cholesterol change to the decaf process but they say on average manufacturers use different type of green coffee (robusta) to produce decaf and it's this green coffee that brings in more fat components, nothing to do with the decaf process.
You could use arabica to produce decaf as well and you could not conclude anythinh then. The title of the article is misleading, once more.
ANd don't forget that anti-oxidant are present in coffee, more than tea, and these are good for the health.
It's not all that simple I'm afraid.
my two cents,
Once I read that smoking could kill me, then I stopped smoking
Then I read that drinking alcohol is bad, so I stopped drinking
Then I read that too much sex could cause a heart stroke ... so I stop reading !
A study I conducted in private has found that life is a lethal disease. In fact, it has been identified as the leading cause of death in nations around the world. The disease is slowly degenerative, with some individuals surviving for over a hundred years; but eventually, the disease exhausts the body's resources, resulting in organ failure, followed by death. The incubation time of the disease is about 9 months, and it spreads through unprotected sexual intercourse.
Symptoms of the disease vary wildly from individual to individual, but generally include excessive motion, episodes of sadness as well as happiness, aggression, anxiousness, nervosity, and compulsive eating and drinking.
Various drugs have been found to weaken the symptoms of the disease, and some substances can even slow the progress of the disease, but a definite cure has not been found, despite elaborate research. So for now the only remedy is prevention.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The real cause of death doesn't lie in food or beverage. Here's a recent study that explains everything:
"We all know that Heart Disease is the #1 cause of death in the U.S. But think hard about this: In Japan, they've got a diet that is low in fat and they have less heart disease than the US. While in France, the diet is very high in fat, and they also have less heart disease than in the US. In India, almost nobody drinks red wine and the heart disease rate is lower than in the US. But in Spain, everybody drinks too much red wine and sure enough they have less heart disease than the US. Algeria has the lowest sexual activity rate, and they've got less heart disease than in the US. But Brazil has the highest sexual activity rate and sure enough...the heart disease ratio is lower than in the US. His sage wisdom to me? Drink, eat and make merry all you want. It's speaking English that kills you."
Of course, this presumes that LDL is actually bad for you, i.e. the correlation between LDL and heart disease is strong and that those proposing the correlation is significant have actually proven causation as well. There are those who believe otherwise (http://www.thincs.org/). But hey, why buck the multibillion dollar drug industry? They will bury you.
Programmers in mirror are brighter than they appear
Nothing is bad in moderation. Or at least worrying about. Drink water most of the time and I doubt you have to worry what the occasional cup of coffee, wine, hard liquor, soda does to you.
I repeat simple common sense - drink water most of the time. It seems nothing else is safe these days. Some weeks it comes out that red wine/coca-cola/coffee is good because of X and then the next week it's bad because of Y.
Above all - don't drink the shit that has 'corn syrup' or 'high fruchtose corn syrup' or whatever 'syrup' in it. It'll just get you diabetes faster. This includes most sweet drinks not diet. Like Starbucks Frappacinos at the next 7-eleven.
I'm serious about water. Up to 50 years ago, most people had water most of the time. It's good for you body and there is nothing for your kidneys/liver has to filter. Now, I know people who wouldn't look at a glass water - much less have one for days on end - instead ingesting endless gallons of soda. I hate to see their health 20 years down the road.
It's probably going to get worse in the future as this generation are accustomed to the friendly coca-cola vending machines besides the non-working water founta in schools these days.
Coffee is bad because it encourages you to consume more calories through milk and sugar, plus it has caffiene and the various crap that goes with it. I think caffeine is more of a addiction - I seen people who never had coffee before turn into caffeine addicts who needed a cup 'to wake up' and then one at lunch and then another at 4pm. I wouldn't care but they actually became cranky if they didn't get their fix.
Not that I don't like a good cappacino at lunch myself. But if common sense prevailed and people didn't have an insatiable want of drinking something more 'tasty' or sugary or exotic or whatever at every turn - I doubt reports of this kind would worry anybody.
*I'd say unsweetended green tea is okay too in mass quantities but then there will be a report out next week:)
Actually, if I drink decaf, other people may die.
I always advocated pure Java.
Million Dollar Screenshot
Yeah, our ancestors were eating their enemies. You are what you eat.
Whoever wrote "So decaffeinated brands usually use a bean that has a more robust flavor," to explain why they use robusta (the cheapest swill, much cheaper than Arabica), probably also says:
.... just thinking about someone saying that makes me want to hurt someone.
"HIV virus"
and my alltime favorite:
"PIN number"
Actually, it is due to the propensity for acronyms (more often, backronyms) to trip up idiots like this guy that I am officially against acronyms.
Your on a computer nerd website and you forget "NIC Card"
thank you for giving me a way to justify my insane caffeine addiction. now all i need is that article telling me how cigarettes lower my cholesterol and reduce my chance of heart disease.
If NHS information leaflets are anything to go by, a similar problem is quite common in ecstacy users. They believe they are becoming dehydrated and panic (after reading the other NHS leaflet about becoming dehydrated when taking ecstacy), and drink a great deal of water for the rest of the night without taking in any sodium. The overhydration leads to swelling of the brain and coma. Of course, this is a government drugs health warning we're talking about, and I believe that the ecstacy itself has a role to play (rather than just the water).
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Not an urban legend - drinking large amounts of water can indeed be fatal.
Hyponatremia is probably the effect you were thinking of - but excess water can cause other serious problems also.
Links here and here
It's not an urban legend. A teenager was hospitalized close to death not too long ago where I live after drinking 25 liters while winning a water drinking contest.
I think the technical term would be "electrolyte imbalance" (although that might also be applied to the opposite where you eat too much salts and not enough water).
Your nerves (and probably a lot of other stuff) need ions to work (but I think it's mainly the axons and not so much the synapses) and drinking too much makes you piss those necessary ions away.
IN overweight people, decaf drinking was associated with increase of good cholesterol, so they might benefit from decaf. Thin and normal-weight people saw a decrease in good cholesterol, so they might want to avoid decaf.
This is, of course, much more complex than "Drink decaf and die". So it's probably hopeless to try to get the real message across.
As I've said in my debugging code for years, 0xDECAFBAD
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
-E. W. Dijkstra
Since coffee is indiginous to Ethiopia where humans appear to have evolved*, I'm glad that it's such a natural food stuff and totally good for me.
The researchers have clearly made a mistake. Pass the goofballs.
*Humans from Kansas are known not to have evolved.
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
A friend of mine in school damaged her brain drinking water to try and pass a drug test. No joke.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
The health risks of trans fats do not prove that "processed" food is bad, unless you narrowly define "processed" to mean "partially hydrogenated".
Actually a huge percentage of processed foods contain transfats (or at least they did), so there was a tremendous correlation. However that was just a sample of a wider trend, which is that when people screw with food, it usually has negative consequences.
The problem with most processed food isn't that it's actively bad - it just isn't good.
My idea of a lolly is halva or marzipan. At any shop, you can see that lolly means sugar, jelly and a bit of flavouring. Nice start, but there's nothing healthy in that little snack.
Now suppose you have a sandwich for your next meal. Mine's on good brown bread, yours is on supermarket white. Yours has had the fibre and vitamins removed. Also, I'm having hommus and vegies, while you're having plastic cheese and sausage. You've got a bit of vitamins, but I've got more. Mine also tastes better, but you've forgotten about that. Also, yours likely has trans fats in it. Quite common now that they don't bother raising the bread anymore, but sort of whip it and cut it into rectangles.
I enjoy juice. It's made out of fruits. Soft drinks look soft of like juice to a toddler who sees them and gets excited, but they're just flavoured sweet water with colouring in.
Convenience packaged foods might be mostly "safe" but if that's how you usually eat, you're looking at malnutrition, which is definitely bad.
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
I prefer to make my sandwiches with extra butter and a thick slice of lard, and dip my salami in the warm blood of baby seals. While cutting down a virgin redwood.
Of course, you are correct. But you might want to switch to decaf anyway, you seem a little uptight...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Actually there are TWO budweiser drinks, one American one... some other country that I can't remember (although this is probably the right one so it would be Czech). I'm guessing this is why Bud did the whole 'genuine bud' thing to make the difference quite obvious.
I wouldn't drink the non American one - it's not great. Although to be honest I'm not too fussed about 'the king of beers' either - I'd rather have one of these.
Because if they put poison in your food, you die. If they make your food well, it gives you pleasure. And if you treat them like drones, you're encouraging them to give you drone food. Don't try to tell me it doesn't matter - even at a place like McDonalds it's possible to get comparitively good or bad service.
Furthermore, how do you want to be treated? With respect, or like a drone? If with respect, then you're just like everybody else. Why would you treat someone else differently than you yourself would like to be treated?
It's not so much that in treating someone else with respect, you ensure that they treat you with respect. That's not the case, as I'm sure you've experienced. But if you refuse to put negative energy into the world, that's less negative energy in the world, and ultimately that means less negative energy coming back at you, even if it doesn't work in the moment. And when you put positive energy into the world, then that's more positive energy in the world that can come back to you later. I know it sounds a bit lovey-dovey, but on a practical level it does seem to work.
Jordan's version of Turkish coffee is a bit different from the Greek or Turkish stuff, just as most of the common Middle Eastern cuisine varies a bit from place to place, but it's pretty similar. But you're wrong about "Americano" being a joke - to us, it's not "the stupid way stupid Americans like their coffee watered down from the way normal people drink it", it's "coffee made the strength Americans like it at home, with enough water in it that you can drink a whole cup of hot liquid, instead of drinking an octuple-espresso which is what you'd get if you asked the Italians/French to make you 250ml of coffee." Yeah, ok, it's watered down, but it's no more diluted than drinking a latte - it's just diluted with water instead of milk.
**Yes, I was with tourists; my wife knew the guy leading the group, who'd been travelling to the Middle East on various business for about 60 years, and we wanted to go there with him while he was still in reasonable health, so there was us, a 40-year-old guy, and a bunch of old people who prefered powdered nescafe. Got to see all kinds of cool places in Jordan and Egypt as well as the usual modern tourist traps and the usual 4th-century pilgramage tourist traps.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
A very common solvent used for decaffeination is CO2 which leaves absolutely no traces of the solvent in the product, since it turns to gas at normal pressures. (compressed to a pressure such that it has liquid properties - for more info, google Super Critical Fluid Extraction)