Coffee's perk -- it's healthy in some ways

June 22, 2007

By ERIN ALLDAY
San Francisco Chronicle
Monday, June 11, 2007

Apparently it's harder to shake a bad reputation than a caffeine habit.

Even after decades of study suggesting coffee is not harmful, one of the world's favorite beverages remains much maligned, with people afraid that it may cause everything from cancer to heart disease and high blood pressure.

But according to research, coffee might actually have some health benefits, and it's one of the few drinks available these days that doesn't come loaded with sugar and calories. It might guard against gout, diabetes and Alzheimer's disease, and other health problems.

Just make sure you stay away from the Frappuccinos.

Of course, the scientists performing these studies might be a bit biased.

"I should probably mention that I start off every day with a double cappuccino," said Dr. Robert Rushakoff, an endocrinologist with the University of California-San Francisco.

Full disclosure aside, he said, coffee has shown promising results in recent studies that compare consumption with diabetes rates, including reports that suggest people who drink six or seven cups a day were 50 percent less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes.

No one understands quite why, although caffeinated coffee seems to have more of an impact than decaf. A lot more study needs to be done, Rushakoff said, especially since the results are based on historical observations and not clinical trials -- the gold standard for medical research.

American coffee consumption per capita has decreased since peaking in the 1940s, from 46.4 gallons a year per person in 1946 to 24.2 gallons per person in 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The best explanation for the drop is the increasing popularity of alternative sources of caffeine -- primarily soda.

Even so, coffee consumption has picked up in the past 10 years with the explosion of Starbucks and other coffee chains, and today, more than half of Americans drink coffee regularly.

So we're drinking a lot of coffee, even if we don't think we should be.

In fact, two cups a day is probably just fine, most doctors say. The trouble comes when people start adding sugar and cream to their coffee, or even worse, buying thick, blended drinks -- with whipped cream on top, of course -- that have hundreds of calories.

A 12-ounce cup of coffee with no extra ingredients has only about 10 calories. But the same size Frappuccino from Starbucks -- a coffee drink enhanced with flavored syrups like chocolate, vanilla or caramel -- can be up to 370 calories. Twelve ounces is considered a small.

Once upon a time, doctors worried that coffee was causing a wide variety of common ailments, including heart disease, ulcers and indigestion. Almost all of those concerns have been disproved, but there's still some argument over coffee's effect on high blood pressure.

A Canadian study published this month showed that coffee may prevent gout. Diabetes has been the latest focus of research, and studies also have suggested coffee could lower the risk of developing Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. Coffee may also lessen the risk of depression and suicide.

Doctors are a long way from prescribing coffee, but they're generally not telling people to give it up, as long as they're drinking in moderation -- two or three cups a day.

"On balance, coffee is a wash," said Dr. Arthur Klatsky, a cardiology consultant with Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif., who drinks one or two cups a day.

Nutritionist Jo Ann Hattner, who teaches at the Stanford University School of Medicine, said she's suggested patients drink coffee if they have trouble getting started in the morning, or if they're having problems with constipation.

"It's a stimulant. It helps everything get going, including the GI tract," Hattner said. "If people are tired, I tell them to get more sleep. Lack of sleep is not healthy and they could develop other symptoms from that. But if you need a jump-start sometimes, yes, drink the coffee."

So if the experts have known for decades that coffee is no big deal, why is it still considered such a guilty pleasure?

Partly because it feels like an addiction, Klatsky said. Most regular drinkers crave it every morning, and suffer headaches or other withdrawal symptoms if they try to cut it out. And partly because caffeine is a drug and an obvious stimulant.

"We have an emotional tie to coffee," Klatsky said. "We're a puritanical culture, and we still have a big holdover from the days when anything that felt good was a problem. There's this assumption that anything that feels good, there's got to be a payback down the line."

(E-mail Erin Allday at eallday(at)sfchronicle.com.)

You don't know Jack till you've been to Lynchburg

May 30, 2007

By LINDA LANGE
Scripps Howard News Service
Tuesday, May 29, 2007

"Every drop of whiskey you see in this world that has 'Jack Daniel' on it comes from right here in Lynchburg, Tennessee, and nowhere else," declares William Conn.

He's leading a tour at Jack Daniel Distillery, the oldest registered whiskey distillery in the United States. "We are Tennessee sour mash whiskey. I call it sour mash sippin' whiskey. That's what I do for the first couple of drinks. After that, I have to guzzle it a little bit."

The Jack Daniel Distillery sits in the gently rolling hills of Tennessee Walking Horse country. Spring-fed creeks lace the green pastures and forests. The distillery makes good use of the pure water and the locally grown corn and grains. More than 10 million 9-liter cases of Jack Daniel's whiskey were sold in the last year. This monumental production occurs in officially "dry" Moore County.

Conn disperses jokes in a rich Tennessee twang and easily entertains visitors on this blue-sky afternoon. He tells us that distillery employees get the metric equivalent of 12 pints a year for free. Bottles are dispensed the first Friday of every month. "We call it 'good Friday.' That's the only day of the month that nobody stays home."

We gather around Conn at the rickyard where cords of hard sugar maple wood are burned to make charcoal for the mellowing process. Charcoal-mellowing is an extra step in production that differentiates Tennessee whiskey from others. Once we reach the Cave Spring, Conn tells why Jack Daniel came here: Water is relatively free of iron because it has seeped through layers of limestone. We amble down to the original office, a modest building with wooden benches on the front porch. As impossible as it seems, the distillery was run from this small space until 1952, when a larger facility was built.

Jasper Newton "Jack" Daniel learned the distiller's trade from Dan Call, a Lutheran minister and whiskey-maker. He bought the distillery from Call and moved the little business to this site. In 1866, at a time when the federal government began its regulation and taxation of whiskey, the Tennessean was the first to register his distillery. He was also the first to put whiskey in square bottles. The little-known distiller caught global attention at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and Centennial Exposition. He entered his sipping whiskey into an international competition and brought home the World's Fair Gold Medal for the best whiskey in the world.

His office looks as if he had just stepped outside for a minute. Old photographs, potbellied stove, gooseneck lamp and safe are still in place. After "Mr. Jack" died in 1911, the distillery passed down to his nephew, Lem Motlow, whose portrait also hangs on the wall.

Distillation is still the same as it was in the early days. Spring water goes through a complex process to gain the sweet, spicy, woody, caramel, slightly smoky flavor of whiskey. It mixes with corn, rye and barley malt to form a fermented mixture called mash. At our next tour stop, we poke our faces into huge tanks and inhale the pungent aroma of the bubbly mash.

The smells sweeten at the charcoal-mellowing vats and stills. The stills flow with 140-proof whiskey. Right after distillation, it trickles through 10 feet of charcoal. Drop by drop, it acquires a smooth, mellow character. We seem to get a little lightheaded and ask extra questions to delay our exit into the sunshine and fresh air.

Before we enter the adjacent warehouse, Conn points to a gray warehouse up on the hill. "That warehouse holds 20,160 barrels of whiskey. Each barrel has about 63 gallons. We got 70 of those (warehouses). That's over 70 million gallons of whiskey in a dry county."

After the charcoal-mellowing process, the whiskey is poured into charred white-oak barrels to mature. Inside the dark room, rows of barrels fill every inch of available space. Production dates are stenciled on staves. Barrels from the same production day are scattered throughout all warehouses. "That way if we have a fire or a catastrophe of some kind, we won't lose a whole day's production at the same time. Of course, if a tornado hits one of them big warehouses, it would rain whiskey all over Lynchburg. It wouldn't be a dry county anymore," he says jokingly.

Once tasters determine that the whiskey has reached peak maturity, it is ready to be bottled. Conn ushers us into the bottling plant, where glass bottles are filled, labeled and packaged on fast-moving assembly lines. The distillery makes Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 Tennessee Whiskey, Gentleman Jack Rare Tennessee Whiskey and Jack's Single Barrel Tennessee Whiskey. Old No. 7 is the nation's best-selling premium distilled spirit brand. Jack Daniel whiskey is sold in more than 130 countries. "The UK is our No. 1 seller overseas. California is No. 1 in the States," says Conn.

By now, people want to buy their own supply. Connoisseurs can place an order for an entire barrel by handing over about $9,000. The barrel's 94-proof, dark amber whiskey fills about 220 decanter-style bottles. Flavors vary from barrel to barrel. Master distiller Jimmy Bedford and a team of tasters select the whiskey when it reaches its peak maturity.

For just a single bottle, Conn directs visitors to the White Rabbit Saloon, a hospitality room constructed to look like the watering hole Mr. Jack operated in Lynchburg before the advent of Prohibition. Water and lemonade are free for the taking. Those wanting stronger stuff go to the White Rabbit Bottle Shop, where whiskey is sold in specially designed decanters and commemorative bottles. "We sell it as a souvenir. What you do with it when you leave is none of our business," he says.

X...X...X

Free tours of Jack Daniel Distillery are given 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily (except on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day). For more information: 931-759-6183 or 931-759-6180, www.jackdaniels.com.