I drink, on average, three cups of coffee a day. Usually this is stuff I brew up at work, and I make it almost twice as strong as most people. My coffee cup is just a standard coffee cup. Not sure how much it holds, probably about 8-10 ounces.
In each cup I usually put about 3-4 packets of sugar. Again, not sure how much sugar is in a packet, probably less than a teaspoon.
So, which is doing more harm to my body and why?
The sugar.
Caffeine is an issue if you are particularly sensitive to it (rapid heart beat, high blood pressure, etc)
The sugar is ‘bad’ per se, but relative to the the caffeine, the sugar adds calories…calories sans nutrition, and that is one of the biggest challenges we face health wise: too many calories available way too easily which offer no nutritional benefit…
And worse yet, pure sugar calories will spike your insulin levels then the crash will drive your appetite.
Seems a pretty fine distinction. Neither is all that harmful to begin with. I heard once somehwere that the tooth decaying bacteria in our mouths grows much faster in white sugar than in other forms of sugar.
I won’t bet much on that being true though. Perhaps a well informed smarty will reveal more answers.
We still don’t know if caffeine is bad at all. We know that there’s practically no situation (unless you’re starving or about to go into severe hypoglycemic coma) where consuming sugar is better than not consuming sugar. With caffeine it’s not nearly clear cut, and many studies show that there are a lot of beneficial effects of caffeine, short term and long term.
I’ll try to find cites when I get home tonight if you want them.