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Coffee drinking has been studied for decades as researchers have aimed to answer one burning question: Is it good for you? Or is it better to stick to joyless drinks like, you know, tap water and mint tea? While there have been cases for just about every argument, one recently published study in The Journal of Nutrition just added another check in the “healthy” column. Of course, there’s a catch. You have to drink your coffee in a specific way. For the study, researchers at Tufts University analyzed the coffee-drinking habits of 46,332 Americans from 1999 to 2018. They found that drinking a cup of coffee each day has some major effects in terms of lowering mortality rates. One cup of joe per day was linked to a 16% lower risk of death, not just related to cardiovascular disease, which has been well-documented, but from any cause. More coffee is better, toobut not too much more. Drinking two to three cups per day showed a 17% lower risk of mortality. More coffee than that didn’t offer any additional health benefits. However, these benefits didn’t apply to all coffee drinkers across the board. The benefits were most pronounced in those who drank theirs sans cream and sugar (or with a very little amount of sugar). The ones who added cream and sugar had the same rates of all-cause mortality as those who tended toward non-coffee drinks. Essentially, the more cream and sugar added, the lower the benefits. Coffee is among the most-consumed beverages in the world, and with nearly half of American adults reporting drinking at least one cup per day, its important for us to know what it might mean for health, said Fang Fang Zhang, senior author of the study and a professor at Tufts. The health benefits of coffee might be attributable to its bioactive compounds, but our results suggest that the addition of sugar and saturated fat may reduce the mortality benefits. Given that there is so much research around coffee, we always have to take findings with a grain of salt (and sans sweetener), but the good news does seem to be adding up for regular coffee drinkers. A study earlier this year similarly found lower rates of premature death for morning coffee drinkers. Another published in June 2025 found that coffee drinking is linked to healthy aging, particularly in women. So, while tons of added cream and sugar won’t add years to your life (did we really think it would?), coffee on its own actually might. Yet with so many kinds of coffee add-ons these days, like collagen creamers, milk alternatives, even creamers marketed as “super foods” that claim to also be good for energy, longevity, and more, our burning questions remain. Until we have answers, the collagen creamer stays.
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Theres one less excuse to skip the flu shot this season. Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca is out with a new version of the flu vaccine, and it makes getting vaccinated easier than ever. The drug can be administered at home, giving you one less reason to trek to the doctors office. And even better for the needle-averse: You dont need a jab to get itthe vaccine comes in nasal spray form. The drug, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration last fall, is available now and can be ordered online. While it will cost $70 out of pocket, AstraZeneca says that anyone with insurance coverage will only need to pay $8.99 for shipping. FluMist Home ships in a special cooling container and needs to be stored in a cool environment. So if you order the vaccine, you’ll need to pop it in the fridge until you plan to administer it. Flu vaccination rates are on the downswing in the U.S., a phenomenon linked to pandemic fatigue and vaccine misinformation. While the flu is an endemic virus that comes back around every year, it can still be dangerous for unimmunized kids, older adults, and people with compromised immune systems. The flu vaccine isnt the only shot that Americans are skipping. From 2019 to 2023, measles vaccination rates fell from 95% to 92%, dipping below the critical threshold for population-level protection. Anti-vaccine activism is rising in the U.S., and that movement now has Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent ally, running the Department of Health and Human Services. On Thursday, HHS announced that it will bring back a task force aimed at scrutinizing the safety of vaccines for children. The Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy, called for the task force to be reestablished in a lawsuit filed against its former leader in May.
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E-Commerce
If cooling your house down during this summers heat wave is costing you an arm and a leg, you can blame AI. Tech companies plan to spend trillions to feed AIs voracious appetite for energy, but normal Americans are eating the cost of that increased demand. Earlier this summer, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declared that a significant fraction of the power on Earth should be dedicated to running AI. OpenAI and its competitors have been raising and spending mind-boggling sums on data centers capable of powering their near-future AI plans, which stand to make the worlds richest companies even richer. Unfortunately, all of that energy consumption is starting to trickle down to the average American. Compared to last year, consumers paid 5.5% more for electricity in 2025, a rate increase that outstrips inflation during the same period. The average American paid $144 in 2024 for their electric bill, compared with $122 in 2021, and those increases are expected to speed up. Myriad factors contribute to rising electricity costs, but the major trends behind the energy use spike arent hard to spot. Energy experts did expect electricity demand to rise, given the drivers of U.S. economic growth, according to a recent report from ICF, an energy consulting firm. However, the rapid spikes due to data center use and industrial demand were not predicted to occur as quickly as they have. The report notes that after two decades of consistent energy use, the countrys appetite for energy is suddenly spiking, sending electricity costs up, too. Rising electricity demand is expected to lead to higher electricity bills for Americans, the report states, noting that residential rates are expected to go up by 15% to 40% over the next five years. By 2050, electricity bills could double in some markets. While the national average residential price for a kilowatt hour of electricity rose 6.5% from May 2024 to May 2025, Americans arent feeling those cost increases evenly. In Maine, that price increase was a whopping 36%. In Connecticut, residential rates rose by 18%, while Utah residents saw their bills go up by 15%. Rates only dropped or hovered around their existing price in five states. New problems, fewer solutions Many obvious solutions that could offset soaring power costs are off the table now. In the early months of President Trump’s second term, his administration moved swiftly to undercut U.S. investment in wind and solar, delete clean energy tax credits, and slash other climate adaptation measures set in motion in President Bidens signature legislative package, the Inflation Reduction Act. Trumps decision to steer the U.S. economy away from renewable energy and back toward fossil fuels is too recent to be reflected in your home energy bill, but those reversals do mean that relief is not in sight unless something else changes dramatically. That change is unlikely to come from tech companies, which are scrambling to build more electricity-guzzling data complexes before their competitors can. Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, and OpenAI are all pouring billions into new data centers that will dot the country. Amazon is even trying to build its own set of small nuclear reactors to meet its power needsan option that many Washington state residents arent thrilled about. Data centers often come packaged with grand promises about revitalizing local economies, but once built, they dont actually require much of a human workforce to operate. Communities are also becoming more aware of environmental concerns associated with inviting Amazon or OpenAI to town, though those worries are likely to do little to slow down tech companies. You should expect OpenAI to spend trillions of dollars on infrastructure in the not-very-distant future, Altman told reporters on Thursday. And you should expect a bunch of economists to say, This is so crazy; its so reckless,’ and whatever. And well just be, like, You know what? Let us do our thing.
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