Coffee's Advocate

Another day, another study suggest that - more than make life worth living - coffee might well save it. This is not particularly noteworthy, in and of itself. The study only notes a correlation, which proves little to nothing. What's more, the mechanism is unclear, and the gap in consumption is massive. So what we've learned, really, is that people who drink a lot of coffee tend to have once type of cancer less than people who drink almost none. As such, there is no call to action, and it's said that people shouldn't start drinking coffee if they don't already enjoy it.

Were this one isolated case, I'd agree. Taken by itself, this one study isn't significant enough to support advocacy. But taken on the whole, there's a massive (and growing) body of evidence that suggests coffee deserves to be considered alongside fruits and veggies as potent natural medicine. And those, of course, are advocated for (however ineffectually).

Fruits and veggies are justifiably considered nutritional necessities, containing vitamins and phytonutrients that do innumerable good things inside the human body. But for all of the studies that suggest this, there are precious few that provide a causative link. And like the above study, taken on an individual basis, one might not think an apple a day worth eating. But we know better. We can take the cumulative knowledge, and glean from it that people should eat colorful plants, often at the exclusion of less nutritive things.

Thus, increase consumption of fruits and veggies; decrease consumption of less nutrient dense pseudo-food is considered sound advice.

In that same vein, I offer the following: Increase consumption of coffee, tea, and water; decrease consumption of sweetened liquids.

That, I think, is reasonable advocacy. No one needs to like coffee. But no one needs to like kale, either. You'd still be better off eating a side of that than french fries. So too can people make wise choices in their quest to hydrate and caffeinate. Coffee is a good one. So is tea, and of course, water. Anything sweetened, on the other hand, is probably not a good decision - whether it's sugar or sucralose/asparatame/neotame/etc. doing the sweetening.

Meet carrageenan

My title is, admittedly, a little misleading. You and carrageenan have almost certainly met before -- probably hundreds, if not thousands, of times. 

That's because carrageenan is one of the many mystery ingredients you see (or choose not to see, in some cases) on ingredient lists everywhere. It's a polysaccharide (complex sugar) which is used as a commercial thickener, extracted from red seaweed. 

Although you'll find it in just about everything, carrageenan is frequently used in beverages to mimic a creamy texture where one does not actually exist. 

Like, I don't know, non-dairy milks and low-fat milks? As it turns out, yes.

Silk, the big brand name in soy milk, uses the thickener in their products. So too does Starbucks use it in their Silk knock-off. 

Now you might think milk is creamy and thick enough. Apparently, you would be wrong. Skim milk frequently uses carrageenan. Which one might expect, given that skim milk has the texture of chalkly water otherwise. But even some brands of half & half and heavy cream (seriously) aren't thick enough in their natural state, apparently. 

Carrageenan's ubiquity wouldn't be worth writing about, if not for two things: First, many people (myself included) prefer their foods to be simply what they are. Second, a rat study suggests that carreegeenan may cause cancer.

Wait, hold the phones. Cancer? Seriously? What doesn't cause that now days?

This might be cause for concern. Might be, because humans are not rats, the amount of carrageenan which was shown to be potentially dangerous was way more than one could reasonably ingest, and the product was degraded. This strikes me as similar to studies which show that OXIDIZED cholesterol (not the kind you eat) caused heart disease in rabbits (not capable carnivores like humans).

In this case, vague correlation does not imply, much less guarantee, causation. 

Which means, at the end of the day, don't worry about it. Do I prefer my soy milk (Westsoy) to be only soybeans and water? Sure. But I don't think that a few glasses of Silk will give me cancer, either. Nor should you fret over whether your milk is just milk, or contains other stuff.