Hacker News Reader

Comment by acureau | Hacker News Reader

Coffee seems to be healthy today, unhealthy tomorrow, and healthy again next week. Though if there's any truth in these kinds of studies I've gotta be damn near invulnerable

View on HN

Two doctors discussing a patient who has been revived out of cryostatis after many years:

    Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk."
    Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.
    Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?
    Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
    Dr. Melik: Incredible.

-- Sleeper (1973)

I feel like I rarely see anything negative about it, TBH. The last one that I remember reading was actually about decaf, due specifically to the decafeination process.

Same as eggs, butter, meat, etc, etc. The only constant seems to be that refined carbs are basically prepackaged obesity if you’re lucky or diabetes if you aren’t.

I think social media and pop journalists flip flop on those issues, but the converging lines of evidence over the last half century have not.

It just seems like the evidence is back and forth when one tweet summarizes a mendelian randomization study on LDL cholesterol and CVD outcomes, and then the next tweet is a guy with one million followers explaining how butter cures cancer. But it shouldn't be very confusing once you filter out the latter in favor of the former.

> butter cures cancer

You jest, but there's some small (<10%) cohort of cancers for whom minimizing available glucose will significantly slow their growth (obviously not stop or reverse), allowing more time for other treatments. Tumors in general tend to be highly glycolytic, and making the body's fuel mix oriented toward fatty acids and ketone bodies may help in these cases.

so keto cures cancer, not butter specifically

As a coffee drinker I take a mild interest in these things and I'm not sure I've seen any studies saying it's bad for you in the last few decades. Is there one you know?

People love to find problems with stuff so I'd imagine if there were problems they'd be publicised. My intuition is coffee doesn't actually have much effect on health either way.

A bit of low-level background radiation is good for your health too...

Is it just as simple as exposing yourself to enough poison/radiation to kill weaker pathogens but not enough to hurt yourself too much?

Wait until you hear the news about eggs.

… and butter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com