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Coffee linked to longer life in latest study, suggesting it's part of a healthy diet

A new study links drinking coffee to living a longer life, according to research published Monday.

Researchers studied half a million people across the United Kingdom who drank 1 to 8 cups of coffee a day for the report published in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA.

"We found that people who drank two to three cups per day had about a 12 percent lower risk of death compared to non-coffee drinkers" during the decade-long study, Erikka Loftfield, a research fellow at the National Cancer Institute, told NPR.

This population-based study including people ages 38 to 73 draws an association between coffee and health, meaning coffee might not be the cause of longevity. Howard Bauchner, editor in chief of the medical journal JAMA and The JAMA Network, noted last month that nearly all studies about coffee are association studies.

A study published last year in The BMJ British medical journal looked at more than 200 previous studies and suggested drinking three to four cups of coffee a day can positively impact health more than cause harm.

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Also last year, Spanish researchers reported people who drank at least four cups of coffee a day had a 64 percent lower risk of death than those who never or almost never drank coffee. Two studies published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in July connected coffee consumption to a longer life.

Still, some medical professionals warn against starting a coffee habit. An editorial by Eliseo Guallar from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, said there is no way to know if coffee prevents chronic disease and reduces mortality because there are too many factors to weigh like why people start drinking coffee and what kind of coffee drinks they're drinking.

Ashley May on Twitter: @AshleyMayTweets