Giving Coffee to a 4 Year Old Boy

[Cyclone]

Both of my children ( now in their 30s ) were brought up on tea / coffee and they've both done very well in their chosen careers. Never had any ill effects. They never had sugar in though, and still don't to this day.

 

And i was murdered 3 times a week, but I'm okay now.

 

Anecdotes like this are meaningless. Maybe they'd be nobel prize winners if they'd had water instead of coffee, who knows...

[Cyclone]

It doesn't sound concrete to me:hihi: that may just be the way you are paraphrasing it of course. One researcher finding tenuous health benefits is not really enough to conclude anything.

 

There is a course a lot of evidence showing the opposite.

 

Coffee has been linked with lots of health benefits in adults.

 

Ideally we all need to drink several cups of coffee, several black tea, some green tea, at least 1 glass of red wine (but not more than 1.5) and a pint of cask beer.

 

Every day.

 

I think it'd be a bit of a struggle though.

[cressida]

Coffee has been linked with lots of health benefits in adults.

 

Ideally we all need to drink several cups of coffee, several black tea, some green tea, at least 1 glass of red wine (but not more than 1.5) and a pint of cask beer.

 

Every day.

 

I think it'd be a bit of a struggle though.

 

...and get your exercise going to the loo three times a night

[maxmaximus]

Coffee has been linked with lots of health benefits in adults.

 

Ideally we all need to drink several cups of coffee, several black tea, some green tea, at least 1 glass of red wine (but not more than 1.5) and a pint of cask beer.

 

Every day.

 

I think it'd be a bit of a struggle though.

 

I still manage that even though I'm 116 years old.

[francypants]

Both of my children ( now in their 30s ) were brought up on tea / coffee and they've both done very well in their chosen careers. Never had any ill effects. They never had sugar in though, and still don't to this day.

 

I don't think what I said was meaningless,

Although I do think you are an argumentative person.

[Cyclone]

Anecdotes are pretty meaningless in a discussion like this. It's nothing to do with argumentativeness and everything to do with data.

 

Stephen Hawkings has motor neuron disease, it hasn't stopped him making incredible contributions to science and winning a nobel prize. But that doesn't mean that motor neurone disease isn't a terrible, debilitating disease.

Do you see my point? A single anecdote about how someone did/had X and still managed to be a success tells us nothing at all about the X in question and it's effects.

[maxmaximus]

Anecdotes are pretty meaningless in a discussion like this. It's nothing to do with argumentativeness and everything to do with data.

 

Stephen Hawkings has motor neuron disease, it hasn't stopped him making incredible contributions to science and winning a nobel prize. But that doesn't mean that motor neurone disease isn't a terrible, debilitating disease.

Do you see my point?

A single anecdote about how someone did/had X and still managed to be a success tells us nothing

at all about the X in question and it's effects.

 

If many people say the same then it would have some meaning and someone always as to go first making the first anecdote as meaningful as any subsequent anecdotes.

[Cyclone]

Not really, a collection of anecdotes never becomes data.

You could argue that a large enough collection does have meaning, but until it was normalised and analysed and the key thing, compared to a control body of data, it would still not be of great value.

 

The lack of a control in most anecdotes is what renders them completely meaningless though. Without a comparison, how do you know that the coffee didn't harm them, maybe without it they would have been smarter than Stephen Hawkings and faster than Mo Farrah. You just don't know.

[maxmaximus]

Not really, a collection of anecdotes never becomes data.

You could argue that a large enough collection does have meaning, but until it was normalised and analysed and the key thing, compared to a control body of data, it would still not be of great value.

 

The lack of a control in most anecdotes is what renders them completely meaningless though. Without a comparison, how do you know that the coffee didn't harm them, maybe without it they would have been smarter than Stephen Hawkings and faster than Mo Farrah. You just don't know.

 

Not of great value is a better description than meaningless.

 

I agree we just don't know and it wouldn't be very sensible to test it by giving one twin coffee and not the other, so all we have is the knowledge that coffee appears to do some good but can be bad if too much is consumed, and many children have consumed it without any apparent hill effects.

[llamatron]

Not of great value is a better description than meaningless.

 

I agree we just don't know and it wouldn't be very sensible to test it by giving one twin coffee and not the other, so all we have is the knowledge that coffee appears to do some good but can be bad if too much is consumed, and many children have consumed it without any apparent hill effects.

 

we can state unequivocally that it is definitely bad for you in large quantities and that the effect is likely to be worse in children because they are smaller and still growing.

 

Whats a hill effect?....