For some reason, a lot of people these days seem to think that coffee is bad for your health. While I am not a frequent coffee drinker myself, I have heard this attitude expressed a few times. It made me wonder if they had forgotten that it was simply a bean that came from a tree.

So, I had to ask myself if they were right. Again, I don’t drink coffee all the time, but I enjoy it from time to time when I need a little extra energy. I’ve never been a black coffee drinker, though. I like those Keurig K cups flavors a little too much, or at least that’s what most of my friends say. Can’t help it, they’re good. But I digress…

I thought that surely, I was not the first person to wonder if coffee was bad for you or not. And since it is such a common drink, I knew that much more qualified people than myself must surely have delved into this with some serious research.

So, here’s what I found out. The following is a study conducted just last year. According to this study, they were not able to associate coffee with any health risk. They say that, at normal levels of consumption, there is no significant risk at all. To specify further, they said that abnormal consumption would be considered more than four cups a day. So, unless you are drinking more than four cups a day, you aren’t likely to see any adverse effects on your health because of drinking coffee.

But it gets even better. The study said that this stuff is more likely to benefit you than it is to harm you. How cool is that? Now don’t get me wrong, I am certainly NOT advising you to go out and drink loads of coffee every day. I don’t do that, and I wouldn’t advise someone else to. But unless you’re an extreme case, you probably have nothing to worry about from that little black bean.

Of course, we can’t talk about coffee without talking about caffeine. Caffeine does have some benefits in that it raises mental alertness, helps with depression and moodiness, and speeds up the body’s metabolism. This can be very helpful for someone who is attempting to lose weight, because it is a stimulant that is safe unless consumed in unrealistically large quantities. Most stimulants are inherently dangerous, hence why so many of them are illegal. But caffeine seems to be a notable exception.

One claim that I have heard from several people is the claim that drinking coffee will increase your risk of certain cancers. Upon looking into this, I find that this idea has already been studied and refuted. The study below covered a wide range of cancers and concluded that no correlation between coffee and cancer could be found.

So in conclusion, you probably don’t have to worry about that cup of coffee you had this morning. It won’t give you cancer or mess up your liver like some of your friends might say. Just limit it to a reasonable level and you’ll be fine.