Is Coffee Good or Bad For You? : Debates over Physical and Mental Health Effects

Abstract

A few years ago I investigated the health effects of both coffee and tea and was surprised to see that most clinical studies and systematic reviews of clinical studies reported beneficial effects. I was somewhat relieved to find out that my life-long tea and coffee habit was not necessarily bad for me. I started drinking Darjeeling tea daily at an early age because my family received an annual gift of Darjeeling tea from a local tea-taster. When I moved to Palo Alto CA in 1981, I found the Printer’s Inc. bookstore where I was introduced to morning espresso in the form of a cappuccino on a daily basis.