In a publication sure to bring coffee lovers everywhere a step nearer to absolute despair, the Nanny State – sorry – European Food Safety Agency suggests that drinking more than four cups of coffee per day could lead to heart failure.
‘Experts’ have declared that a safe limit of 400mg of caffeine per day – 200mg for pregnant women – will prevent people from suffering unduly from sleeplessness, anxiety, and abnormal heart rhythm. The average cup of instant coffee contains 100mg of caffeine, apparently.
The same agency that insists water does not help prevent dehydration, and that horse owners are legally obliged to declare that they will not eat their pets, insists that their study has been researched as thoroughly as that which (allegedly) prevents the sale of unreasonably bendy bananas.
Doctors, Nurses and medical students the world over are surely in uproar over this declaration, for whilst an excessive intake of caffeine may be slightly deleterious to your well-being, doctors and nurses falling asleep on the job because they haven’t drunk enough coffee to keep them awake during their 120-hour working weeks must surely be less beneficial for society as a whole. When it comes to medical students – or any student for that matter – requiring caffeine in order to stay awake at night studying, researching or watching endless repeats of Teletubbies, common sense in the form of half a bottle of vodka (sans Red Bull) is surely enough to ensure a good night’s sleep.
Why any self-respecting media hack would report on such stuffiness is unknown, although speculation would lead to the conclusion that they wrote it whilst still hungover, and after only their first coffee of the morning.
