ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 3, 1992                   TAG: 9203030140
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

AMERICAN COFFEE DRINKERS AVERAGE 3 1/2 CUPS A DAY

Fifty-one percent of Americans over age 10 drink coffee, according to a 1991 survey by the National Coffee Association of U.S.A. Coffee drinkers consume on average about 3 1/2 cups per day.

These numbers represent a gradual decrease over the years from the height of coffee drinking in 1962, when almost 75 percent of the population drank coffee, averaging more than four cups per day. Nowadays two-thirds of coffee drinkers use an electric drip machine with a filter.

It was the National Coffee Association, concerned about the Scandinavian reports, that solicited the Johns Hopkins cholesterol study and funded it jointly with the National Institutes of Health.

The Hopkins cholesterol study does not technically exonerate coffee from the alleged heart disease connection. It only found that if coffee is making people susceptible to heart disease, it is not doing it through changes in blood cholesterol. On the other hand, scientists yet don't know of any other way coffee could possibly promote heart disease. The Washington Post 


 by CNB