A cup of a day keeps experts arguing

A cup of a day keeps experts arguing

JAKARTA (JP): Nothing goes down the throat with greater
satisfaction than that early morning cup of aromatic coffee.

It was the Dutch East India Company that introduced the
African bean to Java. And since the advent of 17th century, Java
has remained a coffee plantation giant and a massive exporter of
the beans.

Now health conscious people are looking at their cups of java
with contempt.

The cholesterol maniacs all over the world first renounced
bacon, then eggs, cream, buttered toast and doughnuts and now
it's coffee under severe indictment for hiking your cholesterol
level.

However don't retire your coffee mug just yet. Although one
group of researchers implicates it as a potential suspect,
another exonerates it.

In 1983 (as reported by Consumer Reports 1991) the Tromso
Heart study of some 14,000 Norwegians found that cholesterol
levels of heavy coffee drinkers, those that consume more than
nine cups a day, were 14 percent higher then those who drank one
cup a day.

In 1992 U.S. researchers in the multi center Hypertension and
Follow up Program reported a similar trend in 9,000 Americans.
However the cholesterol count was not so alarming. It was higher
in the low coffee consumers by only three percent.

More good news for coffee lovers is a study conducted by the
Framingham Heart University that evaluated more than 6,000 people
over a period of 20 years. They declared no consistent
association between the two Cs -- coffee and cholesterol.

However top Indonesian medical consultants advise drinking
less coffee or using drip filtered only. Dr. Sawhney, a
practitioner in Cleveland who visited Jakarta in June strongly
recommends in all his seminars and workshops, "You know you have
to start being careful, if you drink more than five cups of
coffee in a day or if you have other risk factors for coronary
disease, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, smoking or a
family history of heart attack before the age of 55."

So feeling perfectly safe with my once-a-day cuppa, I plan to
relish it with a vengeance. Every morning when my face is given a
natural steaming as I sip from that piping hot mug as it
tantalizes my nostrils, I do not think about the cardiovascular
or high cholesterol demons that might have potential associations
with coffee consumers. Some things in life are just too good to
worry about.

-Pavan Kapoor