Coffee: Good? Bad? Whatever. Just Don't Smoke

It can seem impossible to sort through the health news that comes out every day: Is coffee good for you? Is it bad? Does this or that give you cancer? The best solution, for now, may just be not to worry about it, Trine Tsouderos writes in the Chicago Tribune. Specific studies that seem to reveal a lot about a particular habit really don’t have much weight for the individual.

Studies that find, say, a lower cancer risk among coffee-drinkers can be helpful to scientists seeking to gather a “snowball” of evidence on a particular subject, Tsouderos notes. But the individual should worry only when the snowball gets huge, as it has for evidence against smoking. As for coffee, there’s“no need to change your habits unless you start to hear health professionals urgently calling for action,” says an expert.
(More public health stories.)