Coffee Drinkers — Even Those With a Sweet Tooth — Live Longer. May 31, 2022

Moderate consumption of coffee, with or without sugar, is associated with a reduced risk of death, according to prospective cohort study.

Among more than 170,000 people in the United Kingdom, those who drank about two to four cups of coffee a day, with or without sugar, had a lower rate of death than those who didn't drink coffee, reported lead author Dan Liu, MD, of the department of epidemiology at Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China.

"Previous observational studies have suggested an association between coffee intake and reduced risk for death, but they did not distinguish between coffee consumed with sugar or artificial sweeteners and coffee consumed without," Liu, who is also of the department of public health and preventive medicine, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China, and colleagues wrote in Annals of Internal Medicine.

To learn more, the investigators turned to the UK Biobank, which recruited approximately half a million participants in the United Kingdom between 2006 and 2010. 

After accounting for other factors that might impact risk of death, like lifestyle choices, the investigators found that coffee drinkers were significantly less likely to die from any cause, cardiovascular disease, or cancer, than those who didn't drink coffee at all. This benefit was observed across types of coffee, including ground, instant, and decaffeinated varieties. The protective effects of coffee were most apparent in people who drank about two to four cups a day.

Coffee Drinkers Were Significantly Less Likely To Die From Any Cause

Liu and colleagues noted that their findings align with previous studies linking coffee consumption with survival. Like those other studies, the present data revealed a "U-shaped" benefit curve, in which moderate coffee consumption was associated with longer life, whereas low or no consumption and high consumption were not.

Although the present findings suggested that adding sugar did not eliminate the health benefits of coffee, Liu and colleagues still cautioned against sweetened beverages, citing widely known associations between sugar consumption and poor health.

Still, Wee, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston, and director of the obesity research program in the division of general medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, suggested that your typical coffee drinker can feel safe in their daily habit.

"The evidence does not suggest a need for most coffee drinkers – particularly those who drink it with no or modest amounts of sugar – to eliminate coffee," she wrote. "So drink up – but it would be prudent to avoid too many caramel macchiatos while more evidence brews."

"For those who enjoy drinking coffee, are not pregnant or lactating, and do not have special health conditions, coffee consumption could be considered part of a healthy lifestyle," Toledo said in a written comment. "I would recommend adding as little sugar as possible to coffee until more evidence has been accrued."