When it comes to coffee and tea consumption, a mindful ritual beats a compulsive habit

The drive into Espirito Santo in southeastern Brazil is lined with lush plantations of leafy black pepper and coffee plants. The sun beats down and thickens the humid air between the mountains and the coast.

Coffee, its production and consumption, served steaming hot and in small quantities throughout the day, permeates every part of life in Brazil, the world’s leading coffee producer. Like the French with wine, Brazilian children are introduced to coffee early on. I can say so with authority, since I was a Brazilian child not so long ago.

Today, I drink one or two cups of coffee a day. Some of my colleagues, like Monitor Editor Jonathan Van Fleet, can go through an entire carafe. A very informal poll of our newsroom revealed preferences for cappuccinos, expressos and sugary iced coffee. Others prefer tea, for a little boost, but also to calm their nerves.

For registered dietician Elizabeth Boucher, the question of whether coffee is healthy comes down to how it’s consumed, as a mindful ritual or a compulsive habit. As with most of nutrition, she said, it’s important to have variety with moderation.

Coffee and tea are great sources of polyphenols, plant compounds with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that research strongly suggests help protect against oxidative stress and prevent some cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases.

“They’re fantastic substances,” Boucher said, “but it’s also important to know that they aren’t the only source of polyphenols. It’s important to include things in moderation. Blueberries and broccoli, turmeric, cinnamon and also red wine, we know are powerful polyphenols, but we can’t just eat blueberries, we can’t just drink red wine and we can’t just have coffee or tea.”

The health benefits of coffee, especially, can be outweighed by the negative health consequences of how it’s consumed.

Boucher, who works at New Hampshire Hospital and previously counseled bariatric and weight management patients at the Elliot Hospital in Manchester, said coffee can be treated as a vehicle for milk, creamer, sweeteners and excess calories.

“There could be upwards of 200, 300, 400, sometimes 500 calories that someone’s drinking in these mega coffee drinks without even considering them as being a meal or more calories than a meal,” she said. “I just personally cringe when I see so many Dunkin Donuts on every corner, because I know I’ve had to counsel patients to take a different route to work so that they wouldn’t go through the drive-through to help with weight management and overall healthy behaviors.”

Substituting coffee beverages for a meal or using coffee as an appetite suppressor can be equally misguided, keeping blood sugar levels slightly elevated throughout the day and provoking overeating in the evening by pushing food intake to later in the day, she said.

Unmoderated coffee consumption, or excess caffeine from other sources, like energy drinks, can also lead to sleep disruptions. When Boucher sees patients struggling with insomnia, she knows to ask questions about their caffeine intake: Do you drink coffee? How much? How close to bedtime? Do you feel anxious?

“They might feel their heart rate or they know that their blood pressure is elevated, and those could be signs of too much caffeine,” she said.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers 400 milligrams of caffeine to be the safe upper limit for adults, or about three 12 oz. cups of coffee.

An 8-ounce cup of black coffee has about 96 milligrams of caffeine. A cup of black tea of the same size has about half that, and a cup of green tea contains about a third. A standard 12-ounce can of the energy drink Celsius contains 200 milligrams of caffeine. Red Bull’s smaller 8.4-ounce can delivers 80 milligrams of caffeine.

I felt a quiet sense of moral superiority about never having touched an energy drink until Rachel Wachman, the Monitor’s community editor, informed me that she can function virtually without caffeine.

Wondering about my own coffee drinking habits, I asked Boucher about my morning companion, the French press that unlocks my daily cognitive function.

Coffee passed through a French press or brewed in a Turkish style can let cafestol and kahweol, two compounds known as diterpenes that are found in natural coffee oils, go unfiltered. Studies, including a clinical trial published in the Journal of Internal Medicine in 2000, have long shown that these diterpenes can increase LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol that raises the risk of heart disease and stroke.

When it comes to concerns about micro-advantages or disadvantages of different brewing methods, coffee or tea varieties, grounds or tea leaves, and even the material used to package coffee beans, Boucher cautioned against missing the forest for the trees.

“Is that risk significant for everyone? You know, how much of this is your genetics that might affect that? And then, how much are you drinking?” Boucher questioned. “If you think about someone who is drinking a French press coffee, their ritual is going to be different in the morning. You have to wait for that, and you can only drink so much, so the amount is going to be less presumably versus someone else who’s just going to a big coffee pot — it’s filtered, but they keep pouring more and more coffee.”