Analysis

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Grab a java and you might just live forever

By: Alexandra Petri

Posted: 05/19/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

In this Thursday, Aug. 14, 2008 photo, espresso flows into a cup at a coffee house in Overland Park, Kan. A large U.S. federal study concludes people who drink coffee seem to live a little longer. Researchers saw a clear connection between cups consumed and years of life. Whether it was regular or decaf didn't matter. The results are published in the Thursday, May 17, 2012 New England Journal of Medicine. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner) (CP)

Every few months scientists inform us that something we have been doing for years will either kill us or make us live forever. According to a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, coffee extends your life. Drink six or more cups per day, and you have a 10 to 15 per cent lower risk of death.

I love coffee. I drink so much that, if this study is to be believed, I am functionally immortal.

It is reassuring to hear that something you do may extend your life. Usually longevity requires uncomfortable concessions like push-ups or kale. "To get back my youth," Oscar Wilde wrote, "I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable." That's how I feel. But coffee I can do.

You don't drink coffee because you like it. You drink it because at some point you found yourself surrounded by bright-eyed, bushy-tailed people who had never met a morning they disliked, and you were expected to engage with them. Who are these people, you asked. Haven't they read all the studies about how staying up late is an indicator of higher mental functions?

Then coffee came along.

If coffee were a religion, I'd be high enough in the ranks of believers to be entitled to a strange hat. You can tell because of my jittery hands and use of exclamation points.

Maybe coffee is something of a religion. Coffee has its temples -- in airports, on street corners, even small household altars. Worshippers of Starbucks and of Independent Coffee Shops squint mistrustfully at each other. Coffee has rituals -- the grinding, the dripping, the brewing, the mysterious hissing -- and ritual exclamations ("Not before I've had my coffee!"). There are heretics ("I've switched to tea") and evangelists ("Have you tried Black Blood of the Earth? It's for people who like coffee but wish it contained more coffee!") and all kinds of different approaches.

And now we hear it leads to eternal life.

That was the only logical next step.

Alexandra Petri writes The Washington Post's ComPost blog, a lighter take on the news and issues of the day, and she contributes to the Post's editorial page.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 19, 2012 A17

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