Health news as simple as that?

In two studies released this year and reported in several major newspapers, one in the Annals of Internal Medicine and the other in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers added more evidence to the sizable body of literature on the benefits and dangers of coffee and caffeine consumption.

In the first, coffee consumption was found to be associated with decreased risk of cardiovascular death; and in the second, the aroma of the stuff was found to have regulatory effects in rat brains, upregulating certain genes known to have downstream antioxidant and anti-stress effects.

To add to those, a brief digest of some of the associations between coffee and health status, some commonly known, others less so: increased risk of spontaneous abortions; potential for raising cholesterol levels; enhanced mood, alertness, endurance and reaction time; and decreased risk for Parkinson’s disease and type II diabetes.

And some coffee clarifications, all reported recently and which, for now, are true: It isn’t necessarily off-limits for those with heart disease and high blood pressure; it has negligible effects on weight and bone loss; and it is not associated with increased risk for pancreatic or kidney cancer.

What emerges here, obviously, is an illustration of the complex relationship between health and the chemicals in food. Even a cursory Google news search with the word ‘coffee’ turns up yet more benefits, dangers and myth-debunking.
Also apparent are the perils of health news in major media outlets.

Food news can be especially hyped. Our attention, after all, is easily grabbed if an article has anything to do with something we consume regularly or in excess.
Newspaper word limits taken in conjunction with the complexities of scientific studies make oversimplification inevitable. Throughout time and a sequence of articles, the judgment on individual food items seems to fluctuate wildly, with articles saying coffee is great one week and bad the next.

Together, they certainly fail to achieve any sort of coherent recommendation, and all of them are probably rife with the caveats, exceptions and conditions inherent in any scientific study. Only some of that nuance actually makes it into the news article.

Nevertheless, as with coffee, the release of results of the health benefits of this or that food or drink will continue, and university communities, like any other, will see them bolded and headlined. It can be tempting to see an article on the benefits of chocolate or red wine, green tea or yogurt and think that it really is as simple as that.

The bottom line is while we might wish for the interactions between the chemicals in food and our bodies to be as simple as they appear in a newspaper, they are rarely uncomplicated.

Read health news, especially if the article is really short and sprinkled with emphatic recommendations, with a healthy dose of caution.