Coffee Drinkers May Live Longer
According to new research, coffee drinkers may live longer than other people - even when they take their coffee with a little sugar.
Researchers at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China, studied the health data of UK residents over a seven-year period. They found that moderate coffee drinkers, those who drank from 1.5 to 3.5 cups per day, were the least likely to have died during the period. What’s more, those who put up to a teaspoon of sugar in their coffee, fared better than those who did not.
Researchers caution that the results are less clear for people who use artificial sweeteners. Additionally, people should keep in mind that many coffee-like drinks available these days contain much more than one teaspoon of sugar.
Experts say that previous studies have also found that coffee drinkers live longer than non-drinkers, as well as other benefits to drinking coffee. Those benefits include decreased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, colon cancer, and liver cancer. However, in these types of studies, it is difficult to separate the role of coffee from other factors.
People who dislike the effect of caffeine can consider drinking decaf, as it has many of the same benefits as regular coffee.
Sources: insider.com
For source links, see the article on ESLNewsStories.com
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Useful Language
- Moderate (adj) - not small or large in quantity or degree
- Fare (v) - to succeed, to get along
- Caution (v) - to warn
- Artificial sweetener (n) - a sugar substitute that has a sweet taste but fewer calories than sugar
- Keep [sth] in mind (idiom) - to be careful to remember something
- Decaf (n) - decaffeinated coffee
Discussion
Discuss the following questions with your partner(s).
- Do you drink coffee? How often? If not, why not?
- Does coffee have a noticeable effect on you? What happens?
- Besides drinking coffee, how do you wake yourself up when you are feeling sleepy?
- How long do you want to live? Is there such a thing as a good age to die? If so, what is it?
- Do you believe that coffee can help you live longer? Is that a good reason to drink coffee?
- What other things can help a person live a long time?
- Have you ever had too much caffeine? How did it feel?
- Have you tried decaf? Why do some people drink coffee without caffeine? Why don’t they just drink water?
- Do you use artificial sweeteners or drink artificially sweetened drinks like diet soda?
- Do you care about eating and drinking healthy? Why or why not?