This coffee drinker feeling vindicated

Jacquelyn Mitchard
Tribune Media Services Inc.

Whenever we have to go on a trip, my assistant, Pam, and I time our departure to coincide with the availability of coffee. Indeed, it was partly through our insistence that our local coffee-teria began opening at 6 instead of 7 in the morning.

My kids make sport of my cup of coffee. I drink only one cup, two on a hard day, but that “cuppajoe” makes my day worthwhile. It doesn’t wake me up. It doesn’t transform me from a savage into a lamb. But it sets me up to do what needs to be done. “Mom, you don’t need coffee,” my boys complain when we’re waiting in the drive-thru line and they’re about to be late for school.

Well, yeah, I do. It and skin cream are the vices in this fairly pure life.
Finally, and at long last, medical science has given me facts to throw like confetti in my children’s faces (in a nice way, of course). A November study from the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a journal of the world’s largest scientific society, has shown that coffee (strong coffee, espresso!) boosts enzymes that prevent colon cancer. In fact, the active compound, methylpyridinium, is found almost exclusively in roasted coffee, not in any significant amounts in other foods or beverages.

Let’s hear it for vanilla latte!

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