“Mmm, this could wake the dead!” Has this thought ever crossed your mind when inhaling the intensely toasted fragrance of your first cup of coffee?
Unfortunately, the only authentic resurrection coffee has ever been known to accomplish is raising the sleepiest of us from deep slumber. However, coffee has many other talents and may even help us to postpone the need for ultimate resurrection.
Yes, after being demonised for its supposedly “heathen” origins, banned for its insurrectional potential – think “coffee house revolutionaries” –and long condemned as an unhealthy stimulant by the medical establishment, coffee appears to have been almost fully rehabilitated.
But it’s been a bitter strife – literally.
For instance, from 1991 to 2016, the World Health Organization actually blacklisted coffee as carcinogenic. Even as late as 2018, an NGO almost succeeded in convincing the State of California to mandate cancer warning labels on the drink, due to the acrylamides that may develop during the roasting process…
So, does it mean that coffee is now unequivocally good for you?
Well, almost. Coffee, after all, is still labelled as a psychoactive stimulant (the polite word for “drug”). Indeed, beyond the many beneficial compounds it contains, most prominently vitamins B2 and B3, magnesium, potassium as well as polyphenols with strong antioxidant effects, it is famous for caffeine, the bitter alkaloid that helps keep us active, awake and – if we’re lucky – more productive.
Hence, like other socially condoned stimulants, both individual biology and dosage are crucial in determining whether coffee may be beneficial and, if so, in what quantities.
The newest studies, however, seem to suggest that for most people, coffee is not only a prominent health food but also a powerful longevity drink.
Potential health benefits include protection from type-2 diabetes, osteoporosis, Parkinson’s, liver disease and various types of cancer. Coffee also appears heart protective, if it consumed within reason and in the morning rather than over the whole day (Wang & al., 2025).
But perhaps even more impressive is the fact that, provided you do not drown it in milk and sugar, it is associated with a 14% lower risk of all-cause mortality (Bingjie et al., 2025), a fact seemingly corroborated by another forthcoming study on women, coffee and healthy ageing (Mahdavi, 2025).
Therefore, one of longevity’s silver bullets could be drinking a few cups of preferably black coffee before lunchtime.
However, should you hate (black) coffee because you find it bitter (or it makes you jittery), you can always console yourself with the fact that a 2016 study (Sagioglou et al.) found a correlation between a love of black coffee (not to mention all things bitter) and antisocial behaviour.
But before sacrificing your longevity on the altar of a decadent Irish coffee to avoid being labelled a sociopath, perhaps we could tempt you with a nice cup of tea?
Read on about the virtues of tea – in our next “Longevity F& B” instalment!
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Sources and further reading
“History of coffee”. Wikipedia. Online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coffee
“Coffee”. The Nutrition Source / Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Last Reviewed: July 2020. Online: https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/food-features/coffee/
“Coffee Doesn’t Need to Carry a Cancer warning, Scientists say it Protects from Cancer”. American Institute for Cancer Research. 02.02.2018. Online: https://www.aicr.org/news/coffee-doesnt-need-to-carry-a-cancer-warning-scientists-say-it-protects-from-cancer/
Callahan, Alice. “That Cup of Coffee May Have a Longer-Term Perk”. New York Times. Published June 2, 2025 (Updated June 10, 2025). Online: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/well/eat/health-longevity-aging-benefits-of-coffee.html
Mahdavi, Sara, Hu, Frank, Sun, Qi , Willett, Walter, Ardisson Korat, Andres V. “Caffeine Intake and Healthy Aging in Women”. Current Developments in Nutrition, Volume 9, Supplement 2106062, May 2025. doi: 10.1016/j.cdnut.2025.106062. Online: https://cdn.nutrition.org/article/S2475-2991(25)01522-7/fulltext (forthcoming).
Bingjie Zhou, Mengyuan Ruan, Yongyi Pan, Lu Wang, Fang Fang Zhang. “Coffee Consumption and Mortality among United States Adults: A Prospective Cohort Study”. The Journal of Nutrition, 2025. doi: 10.1016/j.tjnut.2025.05.004. Online: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S002231662500286X?via%3Dihub
Xuan Wang, Hao Ma, Qi Sun, Jun Li, Yoriko Heianza, Rob M Van Dam, Frank B Hu, Eric Rimm, JoAnn E Manson, Lu Qi, “Coffee drinking timing and mortality in US adults”. European Heart Journal, Volume 46, Issue 8, 21 February 2025, Pages 749–759. doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehae871. Online: https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/46/8/749/7928425
Sagioglou C, Greitemeyer T. “Individual differences in bitter taste preferences are associated with antisocial personality traits”. Appetite. 2016 Jan1; 96:299-308. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2015.09.031. Online: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0195666315300428?via%3Dihub
Illustration
Andrea Piacquadio / pexels & epiAge
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