Wake up to good news about coffee

By Charlyn Fargo

MOST of us wake up with a cup of coffee in the morning - even the smell of freshly brewed coffee is inviting. Now there's another reason to embrace it.

The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry reports that coffee contains soluble fiber, the type that can lower cholesterol. A cup has only 1 gram of fiber; however, it can put you a gram closer to the 25 to 35 grams recommended on a daily basis.

And there's more good news. Harvard researchers combined data from nine studies involving more than 193,000 people and found that regular coffee drinkers had a significantly lower risk of type 2 diabetes than those who didn't drink coffee at all. The more they drank, the lower the risk.

 On the other hand, coffee has had a reputation of being bad for the heart. A recent study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition disputes that. A study in the February issue found that healthy people 65 and older who drank four or more cups of caffeinated beverages daily - primarily coffee - had a 53 percent lower risk of heart disease than non-coffee drinkers.

 However, too much coffee can cause irritability, headaches, insomnia and a temporary rise in heart rate and blood pressure.

 For healthy adults, the bottom line is that having two or three cups of coffee daily generally isn't harmful and might have health perks. But like any food, too much of a good thing can be troublesome. -Copley News Service

Charlyn Fargo is a registered dietitian. If you have a question or comment, contact her at charfarg@aol.com.

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