I recently wrote about the absurd suggestion that coffee be promoted as an antioxidant. When you tell people what they want to hear, they love you for it. So the news of Professor Vinson’s findings reported on MSN with the headline "Coffee top antioxidant source for Americans" is still widely circulating around the globe. My response, of course, is not.
Coffee contains many different compounds, of which several are undesirable. People mistakenly think that caffeine is the only problematic component of coffee and that decaffeinated versions are perfectly acceptable as far as health is concerned. Unfortunately that is not true.
It is the case that caffeine is quite a dangerous substance. In very small and occasional doses of course, it does little harm and may well have its uses. I am not a coffe "wowser" who says you must never drink it. But it is a potent anxiotensive agent, that is, it stimulates feelings of anxiety, which can be very unpleasant for many people.
Caffeine is an alkaloid that is broken down in the liver and excreted via the kidneys. Women who are taking oral contraceptives or who are pregnant have diminished capacity to clear caffeine from their their bodies and should avoid or significantly reduce its consumption.
Caffeine, and indeed coffee, is also responsible for raising the heart rate, increasing blood pressure, causing headaches at overdose levels and on withdrawal, and a host of other problems. The removal of caffeine by flushing coffee with benzene, a potent carcinogen, has been largely replaced by flushing with water, yet coffee remains implicated in the incidence of various cancers, including bladder cancer.
As I have pointed out in my discussion of nutritional iron, coffee can reduce the absorption of iron by up to 80% if consumed within an hour of eating a meal. Read that last sentence again while you reflect on your own coffee drinking habits. Iron deficiency is a very serious and widespread problem. Intake of iron is frequently too low and anything with potential to seriously reduce its absorption should be avoided.
