COFFEE IS GREAT IM A FAN OF COFFEE HEY HOW ARE YA LOOKING GREAT I HAVE LOTS OF ENERGY HEY LETS GO CONQUER SOMETHING LARGE LIKE MAYBE CANADA IT SEEMS MANAGEABLE YOU NEVER HEAR OF PEOPLE TRYING TO INVADE CANADA AND FAILING AM I RIGHT HEY GREAT SO GOOD SEEING YOU BOY THIS IS GREAT COFFEE HUH (Erin Meister - ERIN MEISTER) Every few months, like clockwork, scientists emerge from their lair to inform us that something we have been doing for years will either kill us or make us live forever.

According to a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, coffee extends your life. Drink six or more cups per day, and you have a 10 percent lower risk of death if youre a man and 15 percent lower if youre a woman. Or so the study, based on self-reported coffee consumption, claims.

I love coffee. I drink so much that, if this study is to be believed, I am functionally immortal.

It is reassuring for once to hear that possibly, just possibly, something you actually do is going to extend your life. Usually longevity requires uncomfortable concessions like onion sandwiches, push-ups or kale. And forget kale, as Cee Lo Green would say.

To get back my youth, Oscar Wilde wrote, I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. Thats how I feel. But coffee I can do.

Besides, if it werent for coffee, as someone wise once quipped, Id have no personality whatsoever.

Coffee is a civilized vice. As a society, we have agreed upon certain mutually acceptable bad habits. To some extent, this is a crapshoot. Here is a plant, we say, which, when treated and consumed in a certain way, produces a certain stimulatory or depressive effect on the system. Depending on the plant, this is either completely illegal, illegal behind the wheel, illegal in airports and discouraged around babies, or something we are bringing by the gallon to morning meetings! Youre welcome!

If you are one of the fortunate plants, there are hip establishments on corners with counters and tables and low music playing, dedicated to your consumers. If you are not, agents of the law will pursue you over hill and dale, and the only people really enthusiastic about you will have ill-advised beards, bad teeth, unsound political opinions, or the tendency to blow over in high winds.

But we were right about coffee! It even extends your life! Possibly.

The trouble is that most coffee drinkers do not drink it in isolation while doing calisthenics and eating onion sandwiches. Even the study admitted as much. Coffee is the good habit of people with bad habits.

The rest is here:
Alexandra Petri: Coffee, lies, and immortality