> It's basically burnt bean water. Roasted is just a marketing term.

I take offense to this line. Roasting is a very complex thing, you have to adjust the roasting curves to each coffee individually for optimal results, to get the best out of it. There's more coffee than you might think.

Search for Specialty Coffee and the Specialty Coffee Association. You may also watch some of James Hoffmann's videos on youtube. He's the World Barista Champion of 2007 and has his own roasting company. Coffee doesn't have to be bitter or taste burnt, it can be fruity and sweet. There are more tastes to be found in coffee than in wine. In addition to that, the community is not filled with as many snobs as the wine community and there's a lot of science being done on all kinds of things (for example by the Coffee Excellence Center in Switzerland).

That's all really neat, but same went for tobacco. Highly elaborate and detailed methods for ingesting poison.

I think alcohol is next, before coffee. But we shall see!

>I think alcohol is next,

I doubt it. There's a reason why it was considered an 'essential item' in a lot of places during the pandemic, why the soviets gave out vodka rations etc.

Alcohol's a useful tool for keeping a population compliant and sedated, people love it, it's super easy to make, hence why in many places the production and distribution of it tends to be highly regulated, otherwise just about anyone could do it, it's big business and in a lot of places, it brings massive tax revenues through sales so...I doubt it's going anywhere any time soon.

I mean what are they gonna do, ban yeast and sugar? Ban leaving fruit sitting too long? You can't really ever stop the production of alcohol. It just kind of happens naturally. It's not really possible to just ban the process of fermentation...

I think if people had to drink prison hooch or wait weeks to brew their own substandard beer, as opposed to drinking bottled craft beer or tasty wines there would be less alcohol consumption.

The history of the US prohibition says otherwise. Or rather, while overall consumption of alcohol probably did drop, the effect on society of pushing it underground was not positive.

From memory, alcohol consumption actually _increased_ during prohibition.

I suspect while that might be true initially people would soon get really quite good at it.

The Soviets gave out vodka rations because it was in their interest to keep their population addicted to alcohol. Like the nobles did before them, and like they did under Stalin. There’s actually a fascinating history about vodka and it’s use by the ruling parties in Russia over the last few centuries.

> Alcohol's a useful tool for keeping a population compliant and sedated

The same could be said for most forms of recreation.

I think the cat's already out of the bag with alcohol. At this point the issue is probably more that people just like cats.

We already know that alcohol is very harmful and that the "1 glass of red wine is good for you" was bull. Is there really anything but willfull ignorance keeping the myth alive at this point?

Humanity really lucked out on coffee, caffeine is pretty harmless all around. At max 3-4 cups a coffee a day is perfectly okay and not at all comparable to tobacco.

The coffee industry isn’t spraying chemicals and Bronchodilators on their products. At least to my knowledge.

Where's the best place to read more about this misuse of chemicals?

I’m quite sure they’re spraying a lot of chemicals on their products.

Coffee can be burnt bean water if it’s not made well.

I have a few coffee snobs in my life and they slowly are helping me see a light.

I am ok with caffeine being medicinal as needed than seeking a transcendant experience.

You know, there is a lot more done on the taste and flavors of wine than for coffee (in term of funding and research output). And a lot of science with that. In US the research is almost inexistent, but big at least in Portugal, France, Italy...

I would also like to second the recommendation of checking out James Hoffmann's YouTube channel!

He made me appreciate filter coffee and brew a V60 everyday!

Mate, if I lived in Burundi I might have a cuppa local coffee and enjoy the environment. But its not so healthy overdosing in Europe - not just for the locals but for Burundi as well. Its a vicious cycle that will break sooner or later.

You're forgetting a big one.

It's a cognitive stimulant that increases worker productivity.

So not only does the coffee industry have an obvious, direct incentive to promote the benefits and downplay any long term negatives, but EVERY corporate entity and even our government has an indirect incentive to downplay any negatives.

A company or society that hypes up it's young worker population on caffeine will likely out-compete organizations of humans that don't, even if major health problems show up later in life.

And an even bigger one - coffee is extremely lucrative, so there are enormous amounts of money in play to make sure it stays legal/popular/'healthy'.

Tobacco is/was also extremely lucrative. I don't think that's enough to protect it. But it's effect on societal productivity likely is.

As far as I'm aware Tobacco is still extremely profitable, despite being horrendously bad for health.

If it were introduced today there's absolutely no doubt it wouldn't be allowed.

I'd say that means it is being protected.

it is'nt protected per se, more like it got grand-fathered in. inertia and all that.

> it is'nt protected per se

...and you can guarantee a TON of people were absolutely certain the same was true about sugar not so long ago....

In my view, there is no corporate or industrial work without coffee. Work from home may damage it a bit.

none of those are even close to "evidence" You could say all of them about almost anything. Here's an example:

Listening to music:

1. it's just vibrations

2. constant rate of studies "listening to music improves mental health", "fetuses get smarter with music" etc.

3. the incredibly powerful forces behind music and keeping you listening to music

Therefore we'll hear that music is terrible for us soon.

In a way this has already happened though?

We know excessive consumption (can't think of a better word off hand) of loud noises leads to hearing loss, tinnitus, etc.

Certainly not the same as "music is terrible for us", but more of an "everything in moderation" kind of argument.

Eh, I can listen to music for 16 hours a day without hearing damage if it's not too loud. So what exactly would that mean? Like dont drink 212F coffee because it would boil your throat?

Also, 9 out of 10 radio stations say that listening to this song is good for you. Then again, all 9 of those stations are owned by the same evilCorp.

Thats like saying bananas are bad for you because if you eat them exclusively, you will get diabetes

I doubt that it's a major issue because humans have been drinking coffee for a long time, but not all humans, and we've discovered a lot of the things that are problematic for health, things like tobacco, asbestos, and leaded gas. Humans have been eating charred things for a long time, and while they seem to be somewhat carcinogenic, it also doesn't seem to be a big deal.

The natives also smoked tobacco for a long time, not saying coffee is good/bad just providing a counter example

The natural-cured tobacco that the natives smoked has almost no resemblance to cigarettes. The real problems began with sugar curing.

I don’t think there is anywhere near the anecdotal evidence to support this. Even when big tobacco was in full swing people knew smoking was correlated with cancer/lung disease/etc. I felt noticeably healthier when I quit smoking years ago. I’ve quit coffee and aside from caffeine withdrawal little difference in how I felt. What negative health effects do you propose are caused by coffee?

After quitting caffeine I can now fall asleep fairly quickly everynight. For 20% it could be negative.

It could be dosage and timing.

Coffee also affects my sleep but I need it to fight off my depression to some extent. So I have found one cup (250ml) early in the morning doesn't affect my sleep.

I have also found, I can have one more cup on the days I go running! (Physical exercise has something to do with caffeine efect on body)

I have a personal rule of no caffeine after 4PM. It helps with sleep! (6 hours before sleep is the idea)

I wasn't aware of these things until few years ago but now I do and I hope this helps someone!

After "quitting" coffee I'm extremely tired the day after actually drinking coffee.

Since quitting caffeine if I have a cup of coffee I have an incredibly hard time falling asleep.

You asked for proposals, and that’s how I present this. Not as a fact. But it seems to me looking into acrylimides as it relates to coffee roasting processes and the finished product is not an entirely absurd line of scientific inquiry.

And they can have my coffee when they pry it from my cold dead hands.

I don't eat processed meat and excercise daily. I like my odds even with coffee. I was briefly involved in a personalized cancer medicine company and talked to the prof there. He said if you don't smoke, avoid bacon and walk/run a few times a week you have essentially done everything you could. The bacon thing made me curious and it turned out almost all processed meat has nitrite (nitrosamine) added, which is a carcinogenic element. So much so they in fact used it to induce cancer reliably in lab rats. As to why food industry uses it - it is still better than botulism. As of 2021 we still don't have effective meat preservatives.

"Rats fed dimethylurea and 0.3% sodium nitrite for 36 days developed tumours of CNS, heart, thymus, kidney or thyroid in all animals (Sander, 1970)." http://www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/v05je15.htm

> The constant rate of "New Study Finds Coffee Improves [insert health benefit]" articles

Yep, this has become so inflationary, but it doesn't mean that studies and findings are invalidated per se. If multiple (independent) findings come to the conclusion X, then the correlation becomes stronger and stronger. When the correlation is strong (multiple findings conclude X), then you can be reasonably certain that X is likely. Or am I wrong with this?

> Or am I wrong with this?

Some percentage of studies will produce random (erroneous) results, so if one cherry-picks favorable outcomes and buries the rest an impression can be created to suit any narrative. Are they cherry-picked? I don't know. What I do know is that there is a strong demand for positive studies both the dealers to sell more stuff and from the addicts to justify their addiction.

Not to forget for the people doing studies to be able to publish and deliver something... Losing the income is quite big incentive to get out studies that at least on surface look good.

Then how would you decide whether a finding/study is valid or not? What is your modus operandi in that case? Is there an algorithm for this (for selecting good studies or for finding the truth)?

Meta-studies are most useful since someone proficient in the art has taken the trouble to find and analyze all relevant papers. Often times they also publish the method they used to discover and discard papers in addition to the analysis, specifically to avoid selection bias.

Studies published in reputable scientific journals like Nature are usually not bogus, especially if they were already replicated. However applying the results to everyday life is tricky - one certainly must not assign more meaning to them than the authors did, but also probably even less than that. Remember the mantra: the experiment shows only what the experiment shows, not the great opportunities you want it to show.

Note that "nutritional science" is not a hard science, their track record is abysmal. The nearest hard science we have to that is microbiology.

As a rule, all observational studies are junk - too many hidden variables, etc. There are some exceptions to it, but you will be best served by just assuming junk. If you're not willing to discard a particular observational study at least check if the study controls for obvious hidden variables - wealth, age, sex, health level, etc. For example there were "studies" that showed red wine correlates with good health, and the coverage was that we should all drink red wine. But guess what - rich people drink red wine and live longer because rich. Controlled for wealth, the effect disappears.

Thank you, I really appreciate your input!

> It's basically burnt bean water. Roasted is just a marketing term.

So, does that make toast “basically burnt bread”?

I think it means toast is "basically burnt seed mush"

I'd be curious about the coffee studies compared to how people consume coffee. So many people seem to drink theirs with a lot of cream and sugar.

Burnt rotted seed mush, even! The yeast fermentation step is essentially a controlled spoilage. And the result remains delicious.

I know an acquaintance who refers to bread as raw toast.

And they're both pointless, fallacious (non-)insights. Argument from inflammatory reframing? It doesn't change the facts on the ground. If you like the taste and/or psychoactive effects of coffee, relative to the cost, drink it! The fact that you can call it burnt bean water shouldn't matter to that.

I think you know the answer is "yes".

Steaks are just basically burnt meat.

Ideally they aren't

Knock the horns off and make sure it doesn’t moo was how my grandfather ordered his steak

The thing is cigarettes were known to be harmful for a century before anything was done. In 1867 a report found smoking associated with cancer and lung disease. cigarettes were popularly known as coffin nails. At this point several centuries in, we would know if coffee was having a significant impact on our health

This is all too often true for many things. Take asbestos for instance, the timescale with it wasn't just a century but about two millennia! The ancient Romans knew about its dangers, as those in asbestos mines were well known to suffer from what was then called wasting disease.

Move on about 1900 years to the late 19th Century and early 20th Century when the British Admiralty and others commissioned multiple reports into ships' boilermakers, etc. who were commonly found to suffer asbestosis or mesothelioma from the dust from the lagging on steam pipes and boiler insulation.

Despite these damning reports citing clearcut evidence of asbestos causing life-threatening disease, they were all but ignored as asbestos was considered too useful - it outweighed human health considerations.

Keep in mind that most of these reports were commissioned by governments - and unlike commercial interests with a vested interest in making money - governments are supposed to act in the interests of their citizenry but they didn't.

If governments don't give a damn then there's precious little hope until public pressure eventually forces them to act, which, all too often, is long after considerable harm has ourred to many individuals.

It's quite tragic really that those supposedly in charge of our governance can be so callous so often.

The problem with this idea seems to be that lots of studies show health benefits to drinking coffee. Now maybe it's just a correlation and not an actual benefit - but you'd be hard pressed to say it has negative health effects because the correlation goes in the opposite direction.

There was actually a lawsuit won in California that roasted coffee has carcinogenic compound however the state regulators quashed it. I'm surprised people don't continue to make a bigger deal about this. Why did the judge agree that it needs a warning?

https://www.winespectator.com/articles/coffee-no-longer-requ...

Pretty much everything has carcinogenic compounds, that doesn’t mean all that much. Coffee has been consumed for multiple decades by a large percentage of the world’s population. Any significant negative effect would be trivial to identify.

The list of countries by coffee consumption shows some of the healthiest countries in the world.

Obviously you could be suspicious of all the studies that show coffee associated with decreased mortality because of Big Coffee's influence, but you'd need remotely plausible way to show any harm at all here. Sugar and tobacco are very different in that regard. People knew in the 1700s that there was an association between tobacco and mouth cancer, and shortness of breath had been observed forever. Once cigarettes made tobacco widely accessible it became even more apparent, though not proven. (Sugar is less obvious but there are lots of anecdotes in history about overconsumption, like Napoleon's wife who had nearly no teeth because of sucking on sugar cane as a child.)

The margins on burnt bean water are insane. Even when accounting for paying a 'fair wage' to workers in a foreign country.

depends entirely on where you buy it walk into any gas staton/truck stop and you will get hot coffee for around a $1.00-$2.00 its drip coffee with half&half / nondairy creamer and sugar/assorted non-sugar sweeteners. buying beans and grinding them yourself your coffee is cheaper still. as long as you avoid starbuck/dutch bros *genaric espresso stands or Keurig cups the price is pretty damn low.

We see that most stimulants, legal or not. They don't lead to fair wage for producers unfortunately.

Coffee increases heart rate. Heart failure is a leading cause of death and caffeine could be a contributor at scale.

Exercise increases heart rate. That’s why I stay away from it. I still drink coffee though.

I’m with you man. My experience of caffeine is that it is one hell of a drug. From its effects on sleep (a vital process), to its control over our mood.

Exercising also releases hormones that greatly effect basically every human function/behavior. That in itself doesn’t mean it is bad/good.

Perhaps I could have been clearer. It’s bad effects on sleep and it’s bad effects on mood*

Also it's very good question of what type of coffee we are talking about. Black? Espresso? Or the sugar laden version with various various milk substitutes?

People also roast chestnuts and cashews over a fire. Marshmallows are also roasted. It’s seems like a term originating in common parlance and not specifically a marketing term. I seriously doubt coffee is carcinogenic (if that’s what you’re suggesting) besides the baseline grilled/roasted food danger to the stomach/small intestines.

That baseline danger is not negligible. You could read forever on the negative health implications of PAHs, invite you to do a google search. Does that mean the carcinogenicity makes coffee a net unhealthy beverage despite all of its health promoting qualities? Current studies would suggest no. Does carcinogenicity of other consumed roasted foods make them “net unhealthy” rather than not consuming them at all? As per current data, certainly for all types of meat, probably for all other types of roasted or smoked foods, obviously dependent on the amount of roasting/smoking involved.

“ I am not "anti-vax" -- but this shit is unprecedented.”

I’d suggest you hit up Wikipedia and learn about medical history. The smallpox (eradicated worldwide) and polio (eradicated in all but a couple countries) vaccine pages might help you learn that a worldwide vaccination campaign to stop a dangerous disease isn’t unprecedented.

“ I said NO - she can have ONE shot per week. After every vax, she was lathargic for the next few days.”

So you made her lethargic for 6 times a few days instead of a few days for just one time. Congrats on that?

The people who follow the recommended vaccine schedule don’t have any problems, according to scientific studies. Your concerns appear to be based on FUD you read on the internet or imagined yourself.

would you deploy six patches at once to all your production servers with no idea what the outcome will be and you have no idea what's in those patches other than their name when you already had a two week outage caused by a previous attempt at doing such?

If those patches has been deployed before for decades on millions of servers? Yes, of course.

I have no idea what the outage is supposed to be on your example, a bad reaction?

The point is that vaccines are more blindly accepted than they should be. We tech people are way more cautious with patches on full production systems.

The outage analogy is that assume you were patching your systems (all of them) against, say Duqu, and you blindly deploy the Duqu patch to your "millions" of servers, and instead - you INSTALLED Duqu to said servers. That is bad.

The "outage" (clearly you didnt read my post) - We went to Chicago to go to the zoo for a week. Prior my Daughter got the chicken pox vaccine. The first night in Chicago, she actually got the pox from the vaccine. and it ruined the vacation and we had to stay an extra week, basically in the hotel until she was clear to fly. That was an extended 'outage' to our vacation...

Clear?

> The people who follow the recommended vaccine schedule don’t have any problems, according to scientific studies.

Can you please provide some of the studies? Primarily I want to actually do some research and I want to know what the evidence is that it is safe.

I no longer trust authority's scientific claims as this article and several other revelations seem to indicate I shouldn't.

Why would you ask for studies only to assert you don't trust them?

I want to review the studies because I don't trust the claims of media or other authorities, not because I don't trust studies.

That said, I do intend to be critical of the studies as well--anyone should be. I want to review replication, funding, methodology, etc...

I'd like to know what the actual evidence is for long term safety of the current recommended vaccine schedule.

At this point in medical history, with the number of people that didn't know they were participating in an ad-hoc longitudinal study over decades of how well or dangerous the accepted standard inoculation schedule is, I get the feeling you're couching close to conspiratorial thinking as "healthy skepticism".

The vaccines themselves and vaccine scheduling change over time. How would we know if something harmful was introduced?

Unless of course as you state we are unwittingly participating in ad-hoc longitudinal studies.

There are any number of `modern` diseases with seemingly unknown causes. It's not a stretch to be skeptical of the safety of modern medicine in general.

>"I’d suggest you hit up Wikipedia and learn about medical history"

My brother is the director of the VA for the state of Alaska, was commander of the 10th medical wing USAF, personal flight surgeon to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the pentagon, among many other accolades. (Colonel Timothy Dean Ballard)

My grandmother was a surgical nurse in san jose and los gatos for 50 years and did medical malpractice consultation for 20 years.

My Aunt is the NICU lead at El Camino.

My step-grandfather was a top cardiologist (and mayor) for Saratoga. FL Stutzman

I was the technical designer/Implementation/TPM for El Camino Hospital, Good Samaritan, SF General, Nome Alaska Hospital and rebuilt Fred Hutchinson Cancer research center in Seattle as well Swedish and Virginia Mason (my first three hospital jobs when I was 20)... and many others...

I know a lot about medicine. I am speaking as a parent - not denying fn vax. I am saying that KIDS (TODDLERS) don't need that much shit pumped in them all at once.

>My brother is the director of the VA for the state of Alaska, was commander of the 10th medical wing USAF, personal flight surgeon to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the pentagon, among many other accolades. (Colonel Timothy Dean Ballard)

>My grandmother was a surgical nurse in san jose and los gatos for 50 years and did medical malpractice consultation for 20 years.

>My Aunt is the NICU lead at El Camino.

>My step-grandfather was a top cardiologist (and mayor) for Saratoga. FL Stutzman

I think all of that's irrelevant unless they agree with your conclusion. As someone related to psychologists, I can attest that being related to people in a field doesn't necessarily result in you being well-versed in their field. Source: It's basic psychology, and if you disagree then you'd agree I know a fair bit about that.

OK Frasier...

I'm not really understanding what relevance one child having a rare reaction to the varicella vaccine has to do with your decision to extend the duration of the normal side effects of other vaccinations on your other child, and not sure how either of those things related to your claim about Big Vax Baba Yaga.

Stringing together a series of non-sequiturs is not the same thing as constructing an argument.

It was due to how lathargic they would be for days. I am not really understanding why you think SIX vaccines into a 20 pound body seems OK?

Do you have kids and did you give them six vaccines all at once?

What the heck does that not make sense to people for?

It makes the kid miserable.

And if you have one of your kids get chicken pox from the vaccine during a family vacation to go to the chicago zoo, which she couldnt do and we had to stay in chicago another week - so yeah, fuck risking it.

Maybe my kids were extra sensitive - but would you deploy six patches at once to all your production servers with no idea what the outcome will be and you have no idea what's in those patches other than their name when you already had a two week outage caused by a previous attempt at doing such?

> I am not really understanding why you think SIX vaccines into a 20 pound body seems OK?

Because body weight and number of vaccines don't really have any relationship?

> Do you have kids and did you give them six vaccines all at once?

I have two relatively young kids, I don't think they've ever been recommended for more than four at a time, but I could misremember, the numbers never been a big deal. I've never had them given less than what our pediatrician recommended. The CDC schedule has some ranges in it so I see you could possibly end up with six at once.

Haven't observed any relationship between number of vaccines and side effects, either. The times they've gotten one have been pretty much the same as the times they’ve has a bunch.

> It makes the kid miserable.

I'm not aware of any evidence that more vaccines at once does that; I am aware of evidence that spreading them out over a succession of weeks extends the length of time that they are likely to experience side effects.

> And if you have one of your kids get chicken pox from the vaccine during a family vacation to go to the chicago zoo, which she couldnt do and we had to stay in chicago another week - so yeah, fuck risking it.

I'm not sure how you think that very rare side effect (varicella vaccine produces chickenpox in about 2% of cases, but even in the vast majority of them it's extremely minor with a few pox, nothing like what you describe) of a single vaccine has anything to do with your belief in a higher risk from giving multiple vaccines at one time rather than spread out 1/week. That makes no sense at all.

> Maybe my kids were extra sensitive - but would you deploy six patches at once to all your production servers with no idea what the outcome will be

I wouldn't apply any patches to a server with no idea what the outcome will be, but that's not analogous to the case with vaccines, anyway. The only reason I might spread out different batches is to make placing blame for any unexpected problems easier, but even that is only a benefit because patches can be backed out. Your analogy is deeply flawed.

> when you already had a two week outage caused by a previous attempt at doing such?

But even by your own account, the “outage” wasn't caused by the practice you were later avoiding, which simply magnified the impact of common side effects without doing anything to mitigate the risk of serious, rare ones.

Why do you think "Big Vaccine" is conspiring to give your baby shots all at once instead of spaced out? They get paid either way and doctors probably get paid more if you space out.

Why do you think being lethargic 6 times in a row is better than once?

2% of chicken pox vaccinationa cause a mild case. That's unfortunate, and probably shouldn't get the shot during a travel month, but it's better than catching a full case at an unexpected time, isn't it?

Your post claims you are not anti-vax and all it states is how anti-vaccine you are.

Reading comprehension: I said I am not anti BAC, but I’m not going to let them put 6 vaccines in my daughters 20 pound body all at once

> Reading comprehension: I said I am not anti BAC,

No, you did not.

Yes, reading comprehension is important. You said, literally quoted:

"I am not "anti-vax" -- but this shit is unprecedented."