Again, a new coffee cure?

I don’t want to sound jaded on java, bu am I the only one who rolls his eyes at the latest “news” on the health benefits of coffee?

My mother — who was a big coffee drinker — would have been interested in reading the story in yesterday’s New York Times about the newest research on coffee: that a team of Swedish and Danish researchers have discovered a link between coffee and its effect on the development of dementia and Alzheimers disease.

According to the story, subjects who drank three to five cups of coffee daily were “65 percent less likely to have developed dementia, compared with those who drank two cups or less.”

I suppose that’s cause for celebration in some circles, but over the past decade I’ve heard dozens of conflicting reports on the side effects of a good ol’ cup of joe: that coffee can cause cancer, can cure cancer, may be bad for the heart, is possibly good for the heart, and so on and so on and scooby doobie doobie. As a friend of mine, after hearing a news report that coffee might reduce dental cavities, told me, “It still stains your teeth and really, who gives a damn what coffee does after 9 a.m.?”I’m sticking to a cup-and-half every day, no matter what the researchers tell me. After all, my mother, who loved her coffee, can’t read the latest medical news in today’s Times because she’s currently living in an Alzheimers unit and newspapers — like the plastic lids on carry-out coffee cups — are just too complicated for her anymore.