Coffee and Coffee Drinks

As I take my long morning walks with Charlie dog, the second love of my life, I often pass close to a Starbucks and see a parade of people with drinks in hand, usually some variety of a coffee extravaganza.

As a young man I started drinking coffee in company with most of my friends and physician colleagues. Cream or milk and sugar allowed me to enjoy a milkshake-like beverage, and I love milkshakes! Then living in St. Louis, I read an interview with Stan Musial, the great Cardinal baseball player, whose son was a college classmate of mine. Stan said it was okay to have milk or sugar in coffee but not both. So I tried skipping one or the other and discovered that I still enjoyed my hot morning beverage, since by now my palate had come to appreciate the coffee itself. After a while it seemed reasonable to try skipping both cream and sugar. I still liked my coffee and have drunk it that way ever since, now preferring it black. Food preferences are not usually difficult to change.

Long term tea and coffee consumption have been extensively studied. Tea has always shown significant benefits but coffee was questioned, probably due to higher caffeine content. Most recent evaluations now conclude that coffee has long term health benefits if you are not sensitive to caffeine. Darker roasted coffees are much less healthy because valuable coffee phytonutrients are destroyed with more roasting. BUT no-one even suggests that any dairy or sweetener in the coffee is healthy. In fact, dairy, but not soy milk, greatly reduces the nutritional value of coffee by binding healthy coffee chemicals with dairy protein. Take Stan the Man's advice one step further and learn to skip both milk(except plant-based milks) and sugar in your coffee.