Coffee and Tea - How much
Most of the reassurance that coffee is part of a healthy diet comes from observational studies, where researchers ask a large number of people to describe their eating and coffee drinking habits, and then find associations between consuming coffee and heart health. Those studies have found that drinking somewhere around three to five cups a day reduces your overall risk of death as well as your risk of cardiovascular disease. Java also doesn’t seem to have any significant impact on arrhythmias, hypertension, blood lipid levels, or cholesterol, but it does decrease your risk of developing type two diabetes.
All that being said, the thing that’s not healthy about many Americans’ coffee habits is the sugar. Coffee-flavored drinks, or simple drip coffee with tons of sugar added, are counterproductive. The sugar and calories in them work against the heart-healthy black coffee, so try to drink your morning cup with as few adulterating other ingredients as possible.
Tea
Like coffee, researchers think the antioxidants in tea are part of what helps it to have a positive impact on our bodies. Tea drinkers tend to have lower cardiovascular disease risk and overall mortality risk, in addition to having better ratios of low to high density lipoproteins. Lipoproteins are the compounds your body uses to carry around cholesterol (remember: you actually need some cholesterol for your cell membranes to function), and there are two kinds. The low density version is bad because it contributes to fatty buildups in your arteries, whereas high density ones are good because they seem to take the low density version out of your bloodstream. more