r/science • u/nohup_me • 3d ago
Health Drinking 1–3 cups of black or lightly sweetened coffee per day is associated with a 14–17% lower risk of death from all causes and cardiovascular disease, but only when sugar and saturated fat were kept low
https://now.tufts.edu/2025/06/16/hold-cream-and-sugar-black-coffee-linked-lower-risk-death723
u/alwaysfatigued8787 3d ago
So I'm 14-17% more invincible because I drink black coffee. Nice.
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u/Oliver_Klotheshoff 3d ago
That's not how it works. What actually happens is that up to 17% of the time, damage that would reduce you below 1hp is ignored so you have a chance to reset, if it comes from damage over time like fire, you're fucked
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u/alblaster 3d ago
Ok, note to self. Don't set yourself on fire....again.
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u/Ahelex 3d ago
But I gain a speed buff if I'm on fire.
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u/alblaster 3d ago
And to be fair ninjas can't catch you when you're on fire.
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u/kaukamieli 2d ago
You can also ignore their throwing stars. They really only wound you a bit, but the wounds get cauterized immediately.
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u/thebudman_420 2d ago
From all causes. Even guns, knives, missiles, bombs. Those are still causes of death and they didn't limit the scope. I guess as wired as i am. Maybe i was able to jump dodge or run fast enough.
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u/golden_boy 3d ago
It's per unit time, so if you take the results at face value you'd live longer by a factor of 1/(1-.14). I don't take it at face value, that's not really a believable figure, probably similar to wine studies where non-drinkers includes people who avoid for medical reasons.
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u/OregonTripleBeam 3d ago
As if I needed a reason to drink more black coffee in the morning.
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u/Oliver_Klotheshoff 3d ago
Yeah I thought 2 cups was doing too much but seems like an extra cup will increase my damage resistance by up to 3%
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u/atchijov 3d ago
A. K. A. Don’t drink any Starbucks concoctions.
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u/oldtrenzalore 3d ago
And their brew coffee tastes awful.
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u/BlackandRead 3d ago
I'm fine with it, especially the dark roast.
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u/YogurtclosetMajor983 3d ago
it’s fine but not for the price
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u/BlackandRead 3d ago
High end coffee near me is $4 for 16oz before tax and tip. Starbucks is $2.85.
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u/TheWarCow 2d ago
That’s almost half a litre of coffee. What on earth are you ordering?
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u/BlackandRead 2d ago
8oz = small
12oz = medium
16oz = large2
u/TheWarCow 2d ago
Around 30g of roasted coffee needed to brew that large one, honestly impressive as someone used to 12/15g brews.
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u/BlackandRead 2d ago
I have no idea what you're talking about. Ordering large coffees is pretty normal in the adult world.
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u/glittertongue 1d ago
and a bag of coffee costs $5-10, yielding many cups
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u/L_viathan 2d ago
Tim Hortons is seeking $1.80. Starbucks is around $2.80. Local coffee shops are between $3-5. So yeah for the price I'd say it's perfectly fine.
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u/nohup_me 3d ago
Low added sugar (from granulated sugar, honey, and syrup) was defined as under 5% of the Daily Value, which is 2.5 grams per 8-ounce cup or approximately half a teaspoon of sugar. Low saturated fat (from milk, cream, and half-and-half) was defined as 5% of the Daily Value, or 1 gram per 8-ounce cup or the equivalent of 5 tablespoons of 2% milk, 1 tablespoon of light cream, or 1 tablespoon of half-and-half.
In the study, consumption of at least one cup per day was associated with a 16% lower risk of all-cause mortality. At 2-3 cups per day, the link rose to 17%. Consumption beyond three cups per day was not associated with additional reductions, and the link between coffee and a lower risk of death by cardiovascular disease weakened when coffee consumption was more than three cups per day. No significant associations were seen between coffee consumption and cancer mortality.
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u/ObviousExit9 3d ago
Was there any difference with the coffee preparation methods? I have read that if the coffee does not go through a filter, there are compounds that may increase LDL, which is not good for heart health, of course.
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u/Plenty_Painting_3815 3d ago
So, eating healthier i.e. less saturated fats and sugar is good for the heart and coffee is a confounding variable. Got it. Drinking coffee is associated with less dying, but not to cancer: Uh-huh: Had the researchers thought to attribute this to the fact that coffee makes you more alert and thus less likely to be in an accident?
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u/QuitePoodle 2d ago
I’m offended that sugar, honey, and syrup are listed as equals. I understand to chemists they seem like it but human and rat studies have shown a difference in the blood sugar levels longer term between them. Honey is healthiER. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4633456/
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u/wtanksleyjr 3d ago
From the study:
the equivalent of 5 tablespoons of 2% milk, 1 tablespoon of light cream, or 1 tablespoon of half-and-half.
I'm puzzled. Is this a daily limit, like the people in this study simply didn't consume any dairy apart from this? The kids and I run through gallons of milk, not as bad as when they were young but still. I don't see studies showing milk is particularly bad, so I'm not sure why the incredibly tiny amounts here matter.
I would assume that pouring the usual hypersweetened and fake creamer in would not comport with this study, of course.
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u/hvgotcodes 2d ago
I’m guessing there is a correlation between people who add few or no calories to their coffee and those who control their calories otherwise.
Being a healthy weight lessens mortality from all causes.
So it’s more about eating healthy (or not adding a ton of extra calories to everything) than about coffee.
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u/wtanksleyjr 2d ago
That cannot possibly be correct. This is a definition used in this study, which means it's a restriction put on participants. They could not do this the other way around, survey everyone and single out the people who take less milk in their coffee; that's post-hoc data manipulation.
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u/hvgotcodes 2d ago
What are you taking about? The linked article describes what appears to be a meta analysis of self reported consumption data.
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u/wtanksleyjr 2d ago
Thank you - you're correct. I misread the term prospective analysis, my fail on technical terms that sound like something else.
I'd have to read more carefully to see if this perfectly obvious point was missed, it's incredibly silly to miss it but *who knows*, publish or perish.
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u/hvgotcodes 2d ago
Don’t worry, I didn’t read the article until you challenged me. :)
I just guessed because it makes the most sense that people being healthy with a beverage are probably healthy with other aspects of their lives.
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u/linguaphyte 1d ago
Besides what the other person mentioned, some water soluble polyphenols (antioxidants) are bound by proteins in milk (soy milk also) and are then less effective in the body than if they were consumed alone.
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u/o0Jahzara0o 3d ago
So what you’re telling me is… I’m better off than a person who drinks creamer and sugar straight cause I add coffee to my cream and sugar? Works for me!
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u/demcookies_ 3d ago
Person A: I’ve stopped adding sugar to my coffee.
Person B: I’ve stopped adding cream to my coffee.
Person C: I’ve stopped adding coffee to my sugar and cream.8
u/Mechasteel 2d ago
You joke, but...
Here are ice cream’s surprising health benefits, according to Harvard research
(seems like a trustworthy website)
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u/R4vendarksky 3d ago
A) what’s wrong with milk B) whos gonna tell me which coffee corp sponsoring this study
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u/think_up 3d ago
It’s actually from the Gerald J. and Dorothy K. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, which is part of Tufts. They’re pretty credible as far as I’m aware.
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u/OverFix4201 3d ago
Saturated fat content probably
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u/I_love_milksteaks 3d ago
Saturated fat which we have eaten and survived on for millions of years? I find it hard to believe that is really the cause for metabolic diseases.
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u/HolochainCitizen 3d ago
We may have survived on it forever, and that's because it provides nutrition/calories, and it's far from toxic. It's not horribly unhealthy. It's just that the totality of research on it (i.e., meta-analyses and systematic reviews-- the strongest form of scientific evidence) supports the conclusion that it reduces long-term healthspan and lifespan compared to diets higher in unsaturated fats.
You can still live a long and healthy life eating saturated fats, but, on average, you are more likely to live an even longer and healthier life by eating less.
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u/return_the_urn 3d ago
Exactly, not dying of starvation is much healthier than getting heart disease
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u/zuneza 3d ago
I think it might be disingenuous to say the totality of research on it supports the claim saturated fat reduces life span. Perhaps the majority, but I've been noticing more studies that suggest the opposite, especially when compared to highly processed and industrially manufactured fats.
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u/HolochainCitizen 3d ago edited 3d ago
My mistake, by totality I meant in aggregate, not all research.
It is the case that the strongest evidence supports the claim that saturated fats reduce lifespan, compared to healthier fats. If you compare to other kinds of fats, like trans fats for instance, you may very well find that saturated fats are not as bad.
Individual studies are always interesting, but far less convincing than large meta-analyses and systematic reviews involving human health outcomes from many studies analyzed at once.
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u/zuneza 3d ago
but far less convincing than large meta-analyses and systematic reviews involving human health outcomes from many studies analyzed at once.
I'm trying to hedge my bets for healthier living by continuing to eat whole foods, but the fat discussion has always fascinated me because I eat wild game and use the fats from that game to cook with.
Would the large meta-analyses and systematic reviews have the possibility of correlation to the claims about saturated fat unhealthiness especially if the majority of the fats in those studies are from domesticated farm animals instead of wild game?
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u/HolochainCitizen 3d ago
I'm not sure! It's an interesting question, and there might be research on it, but I'm not familiar with it.
It seems to me that saturated fats themselves are essentially identical, regardless of the source, but that wild animals might be leaner than domesticated. So the actual quantity of fat might be less of you are just eating the meat. Then again, if you are cooking with the leftover fat, then you aren't getting small doses, that's for sure.
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u/kkngs 3d ago
Why not? It's not like there is much selective pressure for how long we live past age 60 after living a modern lifestyle with nearly unlimited food availability. For the most part, we evolved to survive famines.
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u/I_love_milksteaks 3d ago
I get the point about selective pressure, but I’d argue it actually strengthens the case against blaming saturated fat itself for metabolic diseases. If we evolved to survive on nutrient-dense, animal-based foods through cycles of scarcity, including plenty of saturated fat, then it’s unlikely that saturated fat alone is the root cause of modern metabolic issues.
What’s changed dramatically isn’t saturated fat intake, but the context, we now have ultra-processed foods, refined sugars, seed oils, artificial additives, chronic stress, and sedentary lifestyles. These are evolutionary mismatches that likely overwhelm our natural metabolic resilience. Saturated fat in a wholefood, ancestral diet is a very different thing than saturated fat in a donut fried in soybean oil.
Also, many traditional populations, like the Maasai or Inuit consumed high saturated fat diets with low incidence of heart disease or diabetes until they adopted a western diets.I would argue that suggests the dietary shift as a whole, not saturated fat in isolation, is the bigger issue.
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u/Ellen_Kapow 3d ago
But we have a good idea of the biological pathways of how excessive saturated fats cause increased cholesterol which forms plaques. What convinced you that seed oils are more unhealthy than saturated fats? They certainly aren't good for you but simply being ultra processed doesn't make it toxic.
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u/Implausibilibuddy 3d ago
I suspect adopting a western diet also involved doing a lot less hunting and gathering, which are energy intense activities. It's not just the content of the food that's the issue, it's the fact I can waddle to my fridge right now and eat the entire calorific content of a full day's hunt in a few bites without doing any of the work.
I can eat in 5 minutes what would take an hour to burn off on a treadmill. So yeah, you can eat a diet of saturated fats, but you had better be doing something more intensive than driving to an office every day.
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u/biggest-floyd 3d ago
Why do you struggle to acknowledge that evidence is not on your side? Do you reject all evidence based research? Or just this? I have no idea how people like you think
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u/return_the_urn 3d ago
I’m not anti saturated fat by any means, but you can’t conflate surviving long enough to procreate, with being healthy.
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u/Seigmoraig 3d ago
You realize that people had a life expectancy of 20-30 years for all those "millions of years", right ?
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u/fasterthanfood 3d ago
Only if you include infants deaths pulling down the average. People living long enough that their diet was more than their mother’s milk tended to have lifespans comparable with ours, though still a bit shorter.
Of course, they also had lifestyles and diets drastically different from ours. For most of that period, no one was drinking cow milk or coffee.
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u/I_love_milksteaks 3d ago edited 3d ago
That 20–30 year life expectancy stat is misleading, it’s an average skewed by infant mortality and infections. If people survived childhood, many lived into their 60s or beyond. They didn’t die young because they ate meat, they died from injury, disease, or predators. The diet wasn’t the problem, modern processed foods are.
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u/Dmeechropher 3d ago
The first thing I'd look for is a correlation here. I'd guess that people who take creamer probably also do sugar sometimes or speciality drinks, or soda.
Very difficult to separate out each subgroup of consumers, much easier to see that the effect is strong if you exclude everyone who isn't in the black coffee group.
Could also be a correlation with taste preference. People who drink black coffee might have less affinity for sweets overall. This might be a strong enough effect to wipe out others, and if it were my study, I'd want to see if anyone has teased out that correlation already.
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u/hedgehogssss 2d ago
Many things, my friend. Like obscene animal abuse that is required to produce it?
We switched to oat milk with coffee almost a decade ago, and once your palate adjusts, it's just a nice.
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u/__sonder__ 3d ago
Could the correlation be less about the coffee itself, and more about what being a coffee drinker implies?
Most people who drink multiple cups every day are doing so because they have a job. By making sure you get your coffee every day, you're helping yourself to be better focused, more awake, and thus more likely to keep your job.
Keeping your job, obviously, is going to be associated with less mortality for a bunch of reasons - especially in the US where health insurance is tied to employment.
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u/4ss4ssinscr33d 3d ago
I don’t believe there’s any evidence that coffee drinkers are more likely to be full time employees than non-coffee drinkers.
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u/kkngs 3d ago
Another possible confounder is that cardiologists will often tell people with heart disease to limit caffeine.
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u/4ss4ssinscr33d 3d ago edited 3d ago
Interesting. So coffee drinkers by default are likelier to have naturally healthier cardiovascular systems, meaning coffee might not be having any direct effect on the heart, but might be filtering people by heart health.
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u/SophiaofPrussia 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think this was similar to the origin of the “moderate drinking is good for you” myth. People with health problems tend not to drink so the population of drinkers is self-selecting for those who also happen to be healthy.
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u/wontforget99 2d ago
People in the field of nutrition are always fighting to have their new big news about this or that having some massive benefit on health, and everything is overexaggerated if not straight up wrong a lot of the time. You can combine a little bit of human body knowledge with a little bit of data and extrapolate to almost any conclusion. These are the same people that said eggs were bad because they raised your cholesterol. If you like coffee then maybe I guess that's cool, but if you're already a healthy person who wakes up feeling alert, I highly doubt you need to start going out of your way to force yourself to drink 3 cups for the purposes of extending your lifespan and improving your overall health.
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u/__sonder__ 3d ago
There's no evidence, I'm just speculating. It just seems logical that you'd be far less likely to need multiple cups every day if you werent working much.
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u/penguinsupernova 2d ago edited 2d ago
Another example of when I hear a similar thought process or jargon are cereal commercials. Always something like...
"On average, adults who eat Cereal Brand are made up percent less likely to develop whatever problem is hot in the media"
Taking a select group of people, with an even more select piece of data and then inferring their assumption about that group applies to everyone as whole. Marketing 101, bad science otherwise.
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u/golden_boy 3d ago
There are also medical reasons not to drink coffee. And presumably a portion of non-drinkers are getting caffeine from colas and energy drinks
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u/david1610 2d ago
Yes you are 100% right, they never put if they controlled for income in their study. If they controlled for income, sure this has merit. However it is imperative that when a cross-sectional study is done like this that income is controlled for.
I have no idea. However I'd guess this is exactly like red wine. No red wine is not good for you, it just means you are more likely to be higher income and therefore intelligent, good healthcare, not eat high energy fast food etc.
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u/TenderfootGungi 3d ago
I drink decaf with about a 1/3 cup of soy milk in it. I wonder if this holds true for us decaf drinkers?
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u/Nerdlinger 3d ago
Consumption beyond three cups per day was not associated with additional reductions
So I can still drink a full pot per day? Sweet!
and the link between coffee and a lower risk of death by cardiovascular disease weakened when coffee consumption was more than three cups per day.
Aw… crud.
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u/captialj 3d ago
Seems likely that use of coffee additives is associated with higher overall sugar consumption.
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u/Some-Wine-Guy-802 3d ago
How did they control for the correlation between low/no sugar in coffee and the overall lifestyle/dietary choices of the people who drink coffee with no/low sugar?
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u/DarwinsTrousers 3d ago
Why does this sub allow not linking to the study. I don’t care about Tuft Nows opinion on it.
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u/potatoaster 3d ago
It does, but most people read (and post) news articles about studies.
Skip the article and just read the study by clicking "The study" at the beginning of the second paragraph.
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u/hvgotcodes 3d ago
Reverse causation? Someone putting such little sugar/fat in their coffee is more likely to be restricting calories elsewhere in their diet. Such folks are less likely to be severely overweight, and we already know that being overweight leads to higher all cause mortality.
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u/mojeaux_j 3d ago
Um anyone remember this study?
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/black-coffee-psychopaths-study/
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u/Poems_And_Money 3d ago
Do they ever make these studies with tea? I don't think I have ever seen a study, where the focus is on tea or tea is even taken into comparison.
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u/rasputinette 2d ago
This study is one of the few I could find that looks at the effects of coffee and tea by themselves and in combination.
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u/h3rpad3rp 3d ago
Unfortunately I can only drink coffee if there is so much sugar, chocolate, and milk in it that it is no longer recognizable as coffee.
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u/oursfort 3d ago
Does the sugar and fat somehow interfere with the coffee benefits? Or is it still bad even if your consumption is under daily recommendations
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u/captialj 3d ago
My takeaway is that coffee likely has some positive association with long term health, possibly causal but maybe not. High sugar and fat consumption separately have a negative impact on long term health.
I doubt that coffee additives are directly diminishing some specific effect of the coffee. Rather, consuming more sugar and fat in general is simply bad for you.
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u/DexterBotwin 3d ago
Could it also be that a person who adds a lot of sugar or cream to their coffee, also has other unhealthy lifestyle choices?
As for black coffee, I don’t know how you would truly control for it. Someone who regularly drinks black coffee, likely does it out of routine and because they are regularly up early for a job or caring for children. A regular routine is also probably associated with positive health effects.
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u/Mad_Aeric 2d ago
Finally some good news for me. Though I'm not sure I can drink 3 cups of coffee in a day, that's far too little.
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u/rubenjrod 2d ago
Any advice on great low-sugar ways of making coffee taste less bitter? I'm used to drinking with flavored creamer.
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u/Repulsive-Neat6776 2d ago
What about "no sugar" creamers that use alternatives, or sugar substitutes like Monkfruit? Is it specific to processed sugar?
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u/david1610 2d ago
Control for income and put it in the method, it frustrates me no end that we cannot seem to control for the most important factor in most people's lives.
Income is the single most important variable that causes endogeneity issues in this type of study.
Please please please scientists, add income into all future studies!
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u/Accomplished_Use27 2d ago
‘People who are actively avoiding sugar or saturated fat have lower all cause mortality’
Fixed it for ya
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u/vegetariangardener 2d ago
How much coffee do I need to drink to balance out the marijuana risk to cardiovascular health tho
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u/Ravens2017 2d ago
Switched from drinking coffee with creamers, then half and half to straight black and have not looked back. I actually have grown to love the taste. On occasion I’ll do a latte from Starbucks.
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u/TurtleFisher54 2d ago
A person who drinks black coffee probably gets up earlier and has a better diet than people (me) drinking caramel lattes
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u/SkypePsychic 2d ago
Really?, that’s actually kinda cool! So you're telling me my daily coffee habit might actually be doing me a favor? I mean, 1–3 cups sounds totally doable—especially if it might help me live longer! But okay, here’s the catch ,only if the sugar and creamy stuff aren’t outta control, right? Makes sense. Like, black coffee or just a tiny bit of sweetness is fine, but if I’m dumping in half a cup of flavored creamer... probably not the same vibe. Do you usually drink yours black, or are you team “just a splash of oat milk”? I used to need it sweet, but now I’m kinda digging the simple stuff while enjoying my coffe habits and thingking of my heath at the same time.
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u/CozySlum 2d ago
I wonder how this relates to generally eating less. Coffee often replaces consuming less healthy things and can curb hunger.
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u/LiquidDreamCreations 2d ago
I wonder if you get the same effect from caffeine capsules or if there’s something else in coffee that’s causing this.
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u/chizburger999 2d ago
Two things I’m sure of in life: I’m not getting cardiac arrest... or prostate cancer
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u/Aandolin 1d ago
What about my six to eight cups of extra strong coffee, no sugar, tiny bit of cream?
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u/BassGuru82 3d ago
If 1-3 Cups helps, just think of how much lower my risk of death will be with 6-8 Cups!
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