The Guardian view on cheering health news: wake up and drink the coffee | Editorial

Let me drink three cups a day, the rebellious daughter demands in Bach’s Coffee Cantata. Her unreasonable father has attempted to ban the bean. Now it emerges that science is on her side. People who drink three to four cups are more likely to see health benefits than problems, according to an umbrella review of 200 studies by a team at the University of Southampton. That level of consumption is associated with lower risks of premature death and heart disease and other conditions compared with those who abstain. (Whether drinkers will “shrivel up like a piece of roast goat” without their fix, as Bach’s heroine warns, is not stated.)

This is a rare piece of cheering research on consumption – for as the daughter also sings, coffee is lovelier than a thousand kisses; and all the more so as the temperature drops. No one is proposing mainlining it in the manner of Honoré de Balzac; the novelist boasted that he drank up to 50 cups a day, which helps to explain the volume and energy of his work but also, some have suggested, sped his death at 51. Nor, as spoilsport researchers remind us, will an accompanying cake improve our health. But there is no need to sacrifice that afternoon cortado for a camomile tea quite yet. The research indicates that, in moderation, our espressos, flat whites and americanos are fine for our bodies as well as – experience suffices here – a tonic for our souls. Coffee drinkers everywhere will raise a cup to that.