How Good Is Coffee for You?

Coffee is one of those foods whose health benefits seem to flip flop every year or so. It’s good to drink, and then it’s not, and then it is again. It’s tough to get a straightforward answer to what seems to be a simple question: is black coffee good for you? By looking into the topic a bit, you should be able to find a reasonable answer to your question.

A thought trend that is currently emerging is that natural food is better than manufactured food. If this is the case, then coffee is absolutely good, as it’s been consumed by people for hundreds, if not even thousands of years. The coffee itself is a berry, roasted and then brewed, that happens to contain a lot of caffeine, excellent for keeping our ancestors working all day and us from falling asleep at our desks.

There are current studies suggesting that caffeine helps our brains stay sharp over our lifespans, as there seems to be a proven link between drinking coffee and lower rates of Alzheimer’s and dementia. On the other hand, coffee can cause problems if you have an elevated blood pressure or trouble sleeping. So the simple answer would be, if you have a family history of Alzheimer’s, you may want to drink an extra bit of coffee a day. If you have heart problems, you may want to cut back a bit.

Either way, keep away from the cheap, heavily processed, ground coffee you can get at the supermarket. This coffee goes through a slew of processing, and the pregrinding actually makes it more bitter than usual. Buy whole bean coffee if you can, and try to get it from a smaller plantation that doesn’t do much processing, and you will be in a better shape overall.

There is quite a bit of advice that can be given on how to make the coffee itself. In general, the nicer models of coffee makers such as Viking coffee makers will do a better job—but without fresh, unprocessed beans, you’re going to have a less effective and tasty cup of coffee. Coffee has proven benefits that you may not want to ignore, especially if you have a history of brain disease in your family.