Coffee, Cocktails and Coronary Candidates

The technologic revolution has provided a surfeit of rich foods at low muscle-energy cost and promoted indolence, sedentary living, obesity, the cigarette habit and extensive use of stimulating beverages. Of these factors only the cigarette habit, obesity and physical inactivity have been firmly incriminated as causes of excess cardiovascular mortality in prospective epidemiologic studies.For those wishing to avoid a heart attack, further depressing news came from the Boston Collaborative Study implying that coffee also damages the heart. And perhaps the final blow was the revelation that the daily social cocktail also caused myocardial damage.1 2 3 In this issue of the . . .