It is 4 a.m. The moon is visible from my bedroom window, a faint crescent hopscotching between clouds and trees. I tear myself out of bed and stagger to the kitchen. Lady Mo (short for Lady Mohawk, a white cat with a black patch on her head), hoping for a spot of breakfast, is blatantly ignored, as I rummage through the shelves looking for a cup, spoon and saucepan. Milk is extracted from the recesses of the refrigerator and warmed on one burner, while warm water bubbles on the other. Miss Mo looks disgruntled and nips my bare legs. I ignore her. She glares and stalks angrily around the kitchen, tail bristling with exasperation.
But until the milk is poured in (stopping slightly before it turns café au lait) and I take my first sip, I am Oscar the Grouch. And Lady Mo, who has known me for over five years, is very aware of that. Like TS Eliot’s Alfred Prufrock who, “measured out my life with coffee spoons,” I moderate my moods with them. And yes, coffee is to me what opium was to Coleridge: I need a hard knock of it to write.
So it was with a sense of great trepidation that I read that coffee may soon come with a cancer warning in California. Under Proposition 65, The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, the state is supposed to regularly publish and update a list of chemicals that are found to cause cancer, birth defects, or negatively impact reproductive health. Acrylamide, produced when food is cooked at a very high temperature (including roasting of beans), is on that list. It was this chemical that put coffee on the World Health Organization’s list of carcinogens for nearly 25 years, before they reversed the warning in 2016, to declare that there was no conclusive evidence against coffee (though they did mention that all “very hot drinks” are capable of causing cancer).
Going by the flurry of activity on the internet, coffee appears to have split the fitness world right in the middle. There are those that swear by it, declaring that it has fat-burning properties, increases performance and focus during workouts and is chock-full of antioxidants that technically lower cancer risk.
The other side has plenty to say too, and they would not be incorrect. Coffee does cause insomnia and acidity; it can be highly addictive; it does turn on the stress hormones. There is a flood of ‘I gave up coffee and this is what happened’ articles on the internet, which claim that abstinence offered many benefits, including better sleep, nicer skin and weight loss (stress makes you fat, but that is another story).
I’ll be honest — I’m addicted to the stuff and I know it. But too much has already been sacrificed on the altar of better health over the last 18-odd years, and I simply refuse to make one more. I simply can’t think of a life without perfectly brewed espresso, well-made filter coffee, a cappuccino topped by foam (and minus hearts and faces, please) and the odd frappé (hold the ice cream and syrup).
As Jerry Seinfeld once said, “We want to do a lot of stuff; we’re not in great shape. We didn’t get a good night’s sleep. We’re a little depressed. Coffee solves all these problems in one delightful little cup.”
I rest my case.
Disclaimer: Two cups of coffee have gone into the writing of this column.
