A little light relief for plague year two - there is a lot of research on the effects of caffeine, simply because it's easy to round up a bunch of students, give them caffeine or placebo, and let them do some tasks. However, we're still surprisingly uncertain about the real life effects of coffee consumption on heart, brain and everything else. As the people championing the legalisation of drugs like to point out, coffee is much more powerful than things like cannabis or ecstasy, so if coffee were to be invented today, it would risk being banned straightaway. (Some authorities did try banning it in the past and failed.)
So what do we know and what remains to be uncovered? In my feature I've rolled out a bit of the cultural history and discussed some of the questions being investigated right now. Bottom line, while we're still unsure about many things, the health advice has become more encouraging in recent years. Moderate consumption of coffee probably isn't going to be detrimental to your health.
The feature is out now:
What coffee does to body and mind
Current Biology Volume 31, Issue 7, 12 April 2021, Pages R311-R313
FREE access to full text and PDF download
Roasting beans is a crucial step in producing the complex mixture of flavours found in coffee. (Photo: Alexas_Fotos/Pixabay.)
Oh, and I was very glad to discover in the course of my research for this Bach's coffee cantata. Here's the video that inspired the introductory paragraph of the feature:
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