Two stats that have nothing to do with each other but are equally surprising to me:
On average, more than 10 people are killed per year by a vending machine
AND
63% of Americans drink at least one cup of coffee per day.(1)
While the former is just weird to think about, the latter is pretty eye-opening. The same study that gave us that factoid tells us that while those 63% are drinking at least one cup per day, on average they’re drinking 2.7 cups daily! That’s a lotta beans! If we’re taking this much of something into our body, it’s definitely worth a look as to whether or not it’s doing us any good--or worse, causing any damage.
For years, we’ve been told that coffee stunts growth, causes ulcers, and causes addiction to caffeine. Study after study gave us hard facts to back that up and doctors spouted them in just about any article you would find about the effects of coffee for the last 50 years. But that hasn’t stopped people from drinking it anyway.
As it turns out, those studies don’t really hold up. They studied the health of coffee drinkers versus non-coffee drinkers and those that didn’t partake in the cups of Joe always seemed to come out on top. But most of the studies didn’t look at any other factors in the the lives of the participants. Smoking, activity level, overall health, family history--they never entered into the data. So, as you can imagine, those are pretty big things to ignore and didn’t give impartial results.