Doctors find moderate coffee intake may help prevent diabetes, stroke

The concept of a golden mean between excess and lack appeared early in Greek writing before being picked up by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics.

And Aristotle's notion of finding virtuous middle ground - between too much or too little of a good thing - might well be applied to coffee, as there are indications that drinking in moderation can help prevent diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

According to a team of China-based doctors, "habitual coffee or caffeine intake, especially at a moderate level" seems to be associated with a lower risk of cardiometabolic diseases (CM).

"Consuming three cups of coffee, or 200-300 mg caffeine, per day might help to reduce the risk of developing cardiometabolic multimorbidity in individuals without any cardiometabolic disease," said lead author Chaofu Ke of the School of Public Health at Suzhou Medical College, part of Soochow University in Suzhou.

And while too much coffee is not recommended, neither is abstaining. Hypochondriacs who opt for decaf or herbal tea might want to think again, going by the findings, which were based on UK Biobank health data for almost 200,000 people.

"Compared with non-consumers or consumers of less than 100 mg caffeine per day, consumers of moderate amount of coffee (3 drinks/day) or caffeine (200-300 mg/day) had the lowest risk for new-onset CM," the team said in their paper, which was published in Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Previous research has turned up indications that the right amount of coffee is good for the mind as well as the body. Italian scientists last year published findings suggesting that caffeine could inhibit the development of a protein that has been linked to cognitive decline.

Published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the University of Verona findings followed similar assessments published in recent years from Harvard Medical School and from a team of Australian and US scientists who in 2021 claimed that "higher baseline coffee consumption was associated with slower cognitive decline" among Australian men.