A Cup for Mind and Body

Your daily pick-me-up may offer unexpected health benefits

- By Mark Pendergrast

AImost since its popular ascendance, coffee has been accused of having ill effects on health. In the 1674 Women's Petition Against Coffee, for example, British women attributed male impotence to the “Excessive use of that Newfangled, Abominable, Heathenish Liquor called Coffee.” Similarly, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, C. W. Post's ads for Postum, his cereal ersatz coffee drink, asked, “Does (coffee) reduce your work time, kill your energy, push you into the big crowd of mongrels, deaden what thoroughbred blood you may have and neutralize all your efforts to make money and fame?

Then, in the 1960s through 1980s, a series of epidemiological studies suggested that coffee consumption might contribute to pancreatic and bladder cancer, breast lumps, heart disease, and birth defects. These studies received widespread media attention.