Coffee or cholesterol?

The Today Show's health feature discussed, amongst other things, that unfiltered coffee can raise cholesterol levels.

"Unfiltered coffee
Unfiltered coffee contains cafestol, a natural chemical that can increase your bad cholesterol levels. Coffee filters significantly reduce the amount of cafestol that ends up in your cup, so all you have to do to avoid this food mistake is to make sure you drink filtered coffee. That means lay off of excessive amounts of espresso, or drinks made from espresso — like cappuccino. You should also avoid Turkish coffee, and those French press coffee makers. " From the Today Show
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18704121/

Also further info at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12947437&dopt=Abstract

Two of the last three sources I'd want for accurate health info are the government and network TV (the third is women's magazines; I'm not even counting press releases from so-called consumer interest groups). I'll lay a bet that next year, the story will be that coffee lowers cholesterol, but only one type, which will then triple in price.

There's so much noise and uncertainty in limited epidemiological studies (it's unfortunately unethical to do most controlled experiments on humans, dammit) that it's tough to take them seriously until the sample size and significance are overwhelming (e.g., cigarettes and lung cancer).

CSPI will only get my French press if they pry it out of my cold, dead hand.

[Jenise]

This kind of science is so variable, one might as well practice selective observation. And me, I therefore choose to believe that coffee helps the liver and that's more important than lowering cholesterol.

http://www.cosic.org/coffee-and-health/liver-cirrhosis

What the coffee giveth, the alcohol taketh away.

I guess this means that caffe corretto is the perfectly balanced drink.

Yes, this is the main rationale behind the "caffeine is bad for you" scare of about a decade ago. As I recall, the initial studies were later debunked, and in fact some of the decaffeination processes involve nasty chemicals that leave a product that does you more harm than the caffeine ever would have (water-process decaf is OK, but more expensive for the manufacturer).

Nutrition is unfortunately a cussedly complex and inexact science, full of trade-offs and contradictory evidence.

-Paul W.

Nutrition is unfortunately a cussedly complex and inexact science, full of trade-offs and contradictory evidence.
-Paul W.

Fortunately, a person armed with a bit of common sense, and a willingness to ignore the pronouncements from the "experts" will get along just fine.

Nutrition is unfortunately a cussedly complex and inexact science, full of trade-offs and contradictory evidence.

-Paul W.

Not really: eat food, eat less, and eat mostly plants. That's pretty simple. And by food I mean things that are made with 5 ingredients or less and all of which can be pronounced.

Hm.

I'll be dead honest with you...anything that appears on the Today Show does not strike me as terribly news worthy or notable.


Just sayin'.

Maybe so, but the NIH?

Hm.

I'll be dead honest with you...anything that appears on the Today Show does not strike me as terribly news worthy or notable.


Just sayin'.

What was on the Today Show?

rwj