09.03
Metricizin’
Yesterday, a co-worker asked me, “how much coffee do you drink?” I answered honestly that I didn’t know. To find out, I drew a picture of a coffee cup on my white board. I also drew a line underneath. Every time I got another cup, I drew another line. (Incidentally, I also drew a smiley, neutral or grumpy face to help my co-workers know my mood before talking to me.)
I drank six cups of coffee today. And I was only grumpy for about an hour, right after lunch.
So all this metricizin’ got me thinking about the health effects of drinking six cups of coffee per day, so I looked it up. I performed several searches on Google to finally understand the progression of health effects as you drink more coffee.
Ask Dr. Google
I searched for “one cup of coffee per day”, then “two cups of coffee per day”, and so on, up to ten cups. Without clicking any of the results, I was able to glean the health effects of each amount by reviewing the first page of results. For the reader’s convenience, I have summarized the results in the following table:
| Cups of Coffee / Day | Health Effect |
|---|---|
| 1 | Increased Risk of Heart Disease; Addiction |
| 2 | Double risk of miscarriage; reduce stroke risk by 20% |
| 3 | Lowered Risk of ovarian cancer; shrinks women’s breasts |
| 4 | Prevents gout; reduces chances of making a baby by 25% (women) |
| 5 | Reduced risk of Alzheimer’s |
| 6 | Slightly lower death rates; diabetes risk reduced by 34% (women) |
| 7 | Hallucinations |
| 8 | Nothing |
| 9 | No Data |
| 10 | Tachycardia |
As you can see, I’m right at the sweet spot, between “slightly lowered risk of death” and “hallucinations.”
Also, in case you didn’t feel like looking it up, Tachycardia means “Your heart is beating too fast.”
Hmm… Is a “cup” literally a cup? I think I’m in the 4-6 range.
Well, one “cup” for me is probably 10-12 ounces. At first you might naïvely think that science people are referring to 8 ounce servings. However, since I’m not experiencing “Hallucination”, science is broken or I’m drinking 6 “science cups” of coffee per day.
The “science” people are talking about 6 oz cups, most likely. Unless the meaning has changed recently, a cup of coffee is not 8 oz.
I think your green cup is between 6 and 8 oz. It looks like a juice glass.
No.
Yes, a cup in liquid measurement terms is 8 fluid ounces. In coffee terms, however, a cup is 6 fluid ounces. Those lines on the coffee pot are 6 fluid onces apart.
hallucinations are a health benefit, right?