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29 December 2020 | NEW YORK - The Dietary Guidelines for Americans released today (Tuesday) reaffirm that coffee can be part of healthy diets, which is great news for the two-thirds of Americans who drink coffee each day, more than any other beverage.

NCA President and CEO William “Bill” Murray commented: “Decades of independent scientific evidence show that drinking coffee is associated with significantly reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and multiple cancers. It is only right that the Dietary Guidelines reaffirm coffee can be part of healthy diets, because indeed coffee drinkers live longer, healthier lives.”

While the Dietary Guidelines include coffee in healthy eating patterns, they miss opportunities to note coffee’s association with specific health benefits. The Guidelines also refer to sweetened coffees as a source of added sugars to limit, despite the fact that scientific studies do not observe differences in health outcomes depending on how coffee is prepared. More than half of American coffee drinkers do not use any sweetener in their coffee.

As NCA repeatedly urged the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and the agencies, coffee should be considered separately from other beverages given the preponderance of evidence showing its health benefits, evidence which has further strengthened since the 2015 Dietary Guidelines.

For further information about the scientific evidence on coffee and health, please visit https://www.ncausa.org/Health-Caffeine and read NCA’s testimony and comments submitted to the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.

For more information on coffee and health, visit https://www.ncausa.org/Health-Caffeine.

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