Coffee prevents grumpiness--and gallstones
By Carl Heintze
I am gratified to learn that scientific studies show consuming four cups of coffee or so a day reduces the danger of gallstones in men. That's, of course, because I usually drink four cups of coffee (or sometimes more) a day, and for years I have been trying to find something of redeeming social or scientific value in that habit.
My coffee consumption started in earnest when I gave up tobacco. There's probably some correlation there, perhaps an addictive personality, but I'd rather not pursue that line of thought at the moment.
Suffice it to say I drink a fair amount of coffee and I enjoy it.
The studies appear to confirm only that men drinking four or more cups of coffee a day reduce their danger of gallstones. Why, or if women do, isn't made clear from the meager reports I've received from the media.
Maybe there is some kind of bad interaction between caffeine and estrogen, or maybe it is just because the coffee companies--who for years have been looking for science to find good things about coffee--funded only the male study.
As a matter of fact, a female friend of mine contends her breasts are adversely affected by coffee. Once she quit drinking coffee they no longer were sore. Why this is so is as mysterious to me as why four cups of coffee or so a day will have any effect on gallstones.
But then it really doesn't matter, I suppose. We can just take it as the media truth--and the media, of course, is seldom wrong--that coffee has a beneficial effect.
I know it has always had a mostly beneficial effect on me. Gets me going in the morning, helps prevent mid-afternoon naps, seems the proper end to a good meal and so on. And, of course, coffee, like alcohol, is a social drug. It seems to work best when consumed in the company of others.
People like to chat, idle and otherwise talk over coffee. It's safer than doing the same thing over booze and it's also cheaper, even though Starbucks recently raised its prices 10 cents a cup for a brew. Maybe Starbucks knew the gallstones study was coming.
Anyway, there we have it: a good thing about coffee, which in its time has been blamed for almost as many things as tobacco. For years some scientists have been trying to prove it is bad for one's heart. Some have even suggested it might be bad for one's prostate, and probably there are those like my friend who think it may have something to do with breast cancer.
No matter what, it would appear to me that coffee, good or bad, is here to stay. That causes me to speculate on the curious way in which coffee has become a part of our lives. It's mostly an imported necessity. About the only place we can grow it with any success in the United States is in Hawaii.
Kona coffee, the bulk of U.S. coffee production, is, however, an expensive way to get your morning jolt of wakefulness and the acreage available for growing Hawaiian coffee is limited.
Most coffee comes from elsewhere, places like Costa Rica, Brazil and Kenya, where labor and land are cheap and where it costs less to grow and ship. But, as with bananas, we've come to expect coffee always will be a part of our daily lives.
I've often wondered what would happen if coffee wasn't available.
Starbucks would go out of business, for one thing; there would be a lot of empty corner storefronts, and Americans would have to find some other way to waste an hour or so during the day slurping and reading the paper or talking.
The demise of coffee also would cause a drastic reduction in the amount of pastry consumed (along with the coffee, of course), working a hardship on bakeries, sugar manufacturers and flour mills.
People like me would arise grumpy and stay that way all day, dogged by the feeling that they had missed an integral part of each 24 hours. Double espressos and lattes and all the rest of the yuppie mixtures which now mask a plain old good cup of coffee would be impossible. We'd have to find some other snob effect, perhaps a morning glass of wine.
The Navy, which, as I get it, depends about as much on coffee for its operations as on nuclear power, would be in dire straits, and mocha almond fudge would be a lost and lamented flavor of ice cream.
And, worst of all, we men would again be subject to gallstones.
Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
