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Comment by anonu | Hacker News Reader

I'll never forget scrolling through google news a few years back. There were two articles that were grouped together but with slightly different headlines:

  Recent study shows that coffee extends life

  Recent study shows that coffee causes cancer

This is one of those debates that will never end. The solution is "everything in moderation". I enjoy a cup of coffee per day - and I limit it at that...

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The situation is ironic, but there's an even higher level of irony in relation to cancer. In some contexts, NOT detecting cancer gives statistically better life quality and/or expectancy.

According to current statistics, testing methods (X-ray) are slightly harmful by minutely increasing risk of cancer, and the resulting overdiagnosis of benign tumors unleashes harsh medication on some people who'd otherwise have had happily lived their lives to natural lifespan without any significant symptoms or discomfort.

Plenty of literature on the internet, first few hits from Google: https://www.city-journal.org/html/stop-overscreening-cancer-... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4415291/

and a recent discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16500924, in particular https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16502246

This type of research is just BS to begin with. The way they collect and analyze the data is only capable of generating conflicting evidence while never leading to cumulative knowledge. The method is called NHST (null hypothesis significance testing).

The main issue is that a null hypothesis is tested rather than any real hypothesis, then they try to draw conclusions about the real hypothesis (yes it is a simple strawman argument). These problems are well known, yet it continues. I was trained to do it not too long ago.

A daily habit does not strike me as moderation

I have been wondering about this for a while about coffee and energy drinks as well. Is one a day already addiction? I have a co-worker who has a Red Bull every day and he pointed to an article that said, one per day is fine. To me it seemed way too much. Maybe moderation is once a week?

Moderation is entirely related to how much your body can handle.

Is a glass of water a day excessive?

Well an addiction is when you are physically or mentally dependant on something. It doesn’t matter how much you have a day or week, it matters what happens if you don’t have it.

>Is one a day already addiction?

Absolutely yes. I have only a cup of coffee (or the equivalent caffeine via tea) per day and get killer headaches if I skip a day. Whether this is okay or not, I'm not sure. I usually see articles saying three or four hundred milligrams is okay, but that seems like a lot to me (that's a few cups a day depending on how you measure your cups).

I have several cups of coffee per weekday morning and I don't even notice when I skip a day (I don't drink it on weekends since it's more of a work ritual.)

Am I addicted?

Same here. I also drink on week-ends but forgot once to bring coffee to the office for for days and did not care.

Exactly what I was going to say.

Moderation doesn't just mean you should have 100-200g of something every day.

The effects on your body from a daily dose of 200g of broccoli vs 200g of fish vs 200g/ml of Coke vs 200g of sugar vs 200g/ml of whisky are going to be very different.

Doctors used to (still do) say that 1 glass of wine a day is fine, and that is considered "moderation" but others now say that you should probably drink alcohol at most once a week to give your liver time to recover and heal completely, because alcohol is toxic. So basically no amounts are really "fine" or should be considered as "moderation". But at least if you give it time to heal that may just work - but still not ideal for your body.

A video expanding on this:

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/everything-in-moderation-ev...

And another article giving some examples for why "everything in moderation" is a bad idea:

http://www.trishamandes.com/blog/2014/5/5/3-reasons-why-ever...

Fair point. I'm comparing myself to the people who say they have 4 or 5 cups a day... My coffee drinking habit is fairly tame in comparison. But I can't disagree with your point of view either.

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