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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.
-- 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).
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!
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...
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.
"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.
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."
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:)
I always advocated pure Java.
Million Dollar Screenshot
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
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.
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.