Four Cups of Coffee A Day Cuts Risk of Oral Cancer 151
An anonymous reader writes "Coffee may help lower the risk of developing oral and pharyngeal cancer and of dying from the disease. The study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, was conducted using the Cancer Prevention Study II. The large cohort study began in 1982 by the American Cancer Society. Researchers were able to examine 968,432 men and women, none of whom had cancer at the time of their enrollment in the study."
Four or more cups a day lowered the risk of getting oral cancers by a whopping 49%.
Yeah, but ... (Score:4, Funny)
At least cancer may give me a few more years to live.
Re:Yeah, but ... (Score:5, Funny)
No worries, the article clearly said "coffee."
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forget the stains, acidic drinks pull calcium off of your teeth
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Maybe calcium protects against oral cancer? :p
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You know if you actually brush those teeth that is not a problem.
Re:Yeah, but ... (Score:5, Funny)
The real "Yeah, but" is this one:
Yeah, but my gf thinks it tastes bad when I drink too much coffee, therefore
Four Cups of Coffee A Day Cuts Risk of Oral Sex
I'm so sorry but the balance is just not there
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And oral sex increases your risk.
So it's up to you to decide how to start the day.
Between oral sex and coffee? I'll take my chances with the BJ 8 days a week!
That's great... (Score:5, Insightful)
...but what does it increase the chances of? Well, besides drug (caffeine) addiction?
Come on, there's always a catch...
Re:That's great... (Score:5, Funny)
Come on, there's always a catch...
don't be so negative there is no catch drinking coffee coffee doesn't have a catch I drink lots of coffee and I don't have any side-effects I think you are being paranoid ha ha I'm not going to have oral cancer and you are just mad about it why don't you chill out and have a cup of coffee like everyone else I think I need another cup of coffee what the hell is this slashdot says I have to wait 30 seconds to post aaahhhh *click* *click* *click* ahhh still 28 more seconds
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Be careful, Cornholio! You're gonna kill yourself bouncing off all those walls!
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Re:That's great... (Score:4, Interesting)
...but what does it increase the chances of? Well, besides drug (caffeine) addiction?
I'll bet the rate of cancer morbidity among heroin users is extremely low.
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Hot coffee can actually increase the chances of cancer, if you burn your tissue way too often.
The coffee producers funded a study that said that hot tea can create cancer. Now they funded a study that promotes coffee, but actually the tea is far more superior than coffee against cancer, because it can be blended and have multiple effects, instead of one. Most of the medicine was extracted from herbs. And most of tea is made from herbs too.
The most healt
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Re:That's great... (Score:4, Interesting)
The catch is this is American style drip brewed coffee. I'd be curious to see if this same finding is true for French Press or Espresso, which previously have been found to contain oils that are cancer causing, but these are removed in filtered coffee. Perhaps they counteract each other. Also I'd be curious if they used teabags or a tea ball in their research (that didn't find results in favor or against), which would be similar to filtered vs unfiltered coffee.
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Based on the residue left on the cup, I would assume that espresso retains the oils, you can usually see any oily residue floating on the top of a short black.
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One possible 'catch' is that caffeine can be a trigger for migraine apparently. I am currently trialling an exclusion diet for migraine management and one of the restrictions is no more than one serve of caffeine or chocolate per day - and a 'serve' is smaller than you'd think.
Ironically, one of the medications my husband used to be prescribed for migraine was a product called Cafergot, to be taken at the onset of a migraine, it used caffeine to carry ergot directly to the brain for faster uptake in order t
COFFEE? (Score:5, Funny)
I like coffee. I REALLY LIKE COFFEE. I drink a lot of coffee. SURE I PEE A LOT, and YES well MAYBE but not REALLY, Iâ(TM)m NOT HIGH STRUNG. I just tell MY FRIENDS to MELLOW THE FUCK OUT. Itâ(TM)s not me, itâ(TM)s you. YOU MOTHER FUCKER. Not me, you. I love coffee. HOW FAST ARE WE GOING? I have things to do. Good bye⦠SERIOUSLY, GOOD FUCKING BYE. Good bye. I love coffee. Or is it cocaine, Iâ(TM)m not sure. Or maybe Iâ(TM)m a crack head? HELLO! HELLO! Yellow mellow. Coffee? Did someone say coffee? I love coffee. Mostly triple espressos, no water no ice. LOVE the drip. I LOVE THE FUCKING DRIP. Coffee that is.
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Maybe you confused your cocaine for your creamer mix or sugar. I keep mine next to each other bye the coffee machine too. Easy mistake.
Me too (Score:2)
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statistics (Score:1)
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22% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
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74% of people get that statistic wrong 100% of the time.
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Google "Relative risk"
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As a rule of thumb, just ignore anything with an RR<2 (200%).
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Anyone good with statistics? Sounds to me like 49% is actually bad, I mean, 51% of the people in this study got cancer.
I *hope* you're being facetious....
If a human's risk of developing oral cancer at some point in his lifetime is 2 in 100,000, then drinking 4+ cups of coffee per day reduces that risk to essentially 1 per 100,000.
You're welcome.
Re:statistics (Score:4, Informative)
If 100 out of 10000 non-coffee-drinkers got cancer (1%) and 51 out of 10000 coffee drinkers got cancer (0.51%) that's a 49% decrease.
You Sure? (Score:4, Insightful)
These studies are meaningless.
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You sure it doesn't mean that those with the physical constitution to withstand 4 cups of coffee are resistant to oral cancers?
These studies are meaningless.
You will discover the meaning only if you drink coffee. No, I mean lots of coffee... you should strive to get over the 4 cups.
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This. There is a reason 2/3s~ of the human race don't get cancer. Hint, it isn't because they were lucky.
Most people develop and destroy minor cancers throughout their entire life, a little known fact that seems to be forgotten by the majority.
These people, even exposed to high numbers of carcinogens still don't develop full-on cancers.
That is a genetic reason and one we still don't fully understand yet, that is different even from diet. (but diet does increase your defences too)
No, Petri-dish tests aren
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This. There is a reason 2/3s~ of the human race don't get cancer. Hint, it isn't because they were lucky.
That should be simple to test, by checking if four cups of coffee only lowers oral cancer or other types of cancer too. If it only lowers oral cancer but mysteriously no others, then this lowering effect has nothing to do with your "physical constitution".
Cancer rates are not entirely genetic, that much is already extremely well-established ... there are other major risk factors like smoking and obesit
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Most people develop and destroy minor cancers throughout their entire life, a little known fact that seems to be forgotten by the majority.
Yep. Say hello to cancer caused by AIDS because your white cells can't fight off the cancer as it normally does.
Probably just affects the flora in the mouth. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Bacteria and fungi have a balance, I believe that's true. They compete for resources. But bacteria and viruses? Viruses don't compete for resources, they just splice in host cells dna.
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You sure it doesn't mean that those with the physical constitution to withstand 4 cups of coffee are resistant to oral cancers?
Withstand four cups of coffee?? That doesn't make sense at all, most coffee drinkers I know drink at least that much, and most non-coffee drinkers I know don't drink it because they just don't like the taste. The only people I know who hold it down to two cups are older folks; caffiene makes them shake.
And yes, correlation doesn't prove causation, but the fact that it's cancers of b
Relative versus absolute risk (Score:5, Interesting)
I find that changing relative risk to absolute risk makes the wow factor of these studies go down considerably. The absolute risk is of getting oral cancers and dying from them can be derived from the abstract:
Among 968,432 men and women who were cancer free at enrollment, 868 deaths due to oral/pharyngeal cancer occurred during 26 years of follow-up.
So the 26-year absolute risk of death due to oral/pharyngeal cancer in this study was about 1 in 1,000 (one thousand). Assuming an even spread across the years, that's also about 1 in 30,000 for any given year.
Drinking greater than 4 cups of coffee a day has a relative risk of about 0.5, so that's about 1 in 2,000 over 26 years (a difference of 0.045%), or about 1 in 60,000 in any given year (a difference of 0.0017%).
Note that this risk reduction is associated with death due specifically to oral/pharyngeal cancer, not the cancer alone -- it does not follow from these results that drinking coffee reduces your risk of getting cancer. If you get oral/pharyngeal cancer, but die from being impaled by an angry unicorn, it doesn't count for the purposes of this result / association.
Go Go Statistics! (Score:1)
Drinking cyanide daily would also lower oral cancer death rates...
Re:Relative versus absolute risk (Score:4, Interesting)
Note that this risk reduction is associated with death due specifically to oral/pharyngeal cancer, not the cancer alone -- it does not follow from these results that drinking coffee reduces your risk of getting cancer. If you get oral/pharyngeal cancer, but die from being impaled by an angry unicorn, it doesn't count for the purposes of this result / association.
Thank you! A beacon of logic in an attic of doubt and uncertainty.
In order to assess the risk, we need to compare the total risk of drinking coffee with the total risk of not drinking coffee. Just examining and comparing one aspect is not enough - we need to take everything into account.
I've been considering starting to drink coffee now that I'm getting older (>50 yrs), and have been doing a bunch of research on it. I've found a number of benefits in the literature to drinking coffee; for example, it lowers the risk of kidney stones (surprising, in my view).
I have not found any long-term health disadvantages to drinking coffee (setting aside obvious short-term effects), and the number of benefits is surprising. I'm not ready to consider coffee as "safe" quite yet, but so far as I can tell it's a good bet.
We need a study of the total risk associated with drinking coffee, in the manner that we have total risks associated with smoking and drinking.
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I would recommend this article in The Atlantic: Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science. [theatlantic.com] It points out many of the fallacies of this kind of medical research.
surely, there were other results... (Score:5, Interesting)
A 26 year study, following 968,432 people and these guys draw a conclusion revolving around coffee and a cancer involving 0.09% of the people in the study?
That's some serious barrel scraping on that data set.
That said, it's one more argument to use when my wife complains that I drink too much coffee. Go science!
Yeah, but at those side-effects, it's not worth it (Score:1)
Four cups a day That's the addict limit.
I think everyone knows that in the long run, this does more harm than good. *Much more harm*.
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Four cups a day That's the addict limit.
Daily use of any amount of an addictive substance will cause addiction.
I think everyone knows that in the long run, this does more harm than good.
I can cite studies that show all sorts of beneficial effects of coffee, but I have yet to run across a single one that shows deleterious effects. You got a citation, coward?
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Subsequent research will show ... (Score:4, Funny)
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Now, somebody, please come out with a study that refutes my hypothesis so I can get back to drinking Mountain Dew by next sumer!
Not quite as impressive... (Score:3)
mmmm (Score:1, Informative)
but certainly you can't disprove something by showing no determinable results on it.
Not worth it (Score:2)
Sooooooo... (Score:2)
....coffee is good for us again? Or maybe at least until next week, when the media sensationalizes some stupid study that shows drinking ten or more cups of coffee a day increases our 1 in 10^8 chance of developing some condition by 10%.
I think the question is... (Score:2)
... How many Norwegians [satwcomic.com] have oral cancer.
Or all the other people on this list of heavy coffee consumers.
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sorry slashdot ate my link:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/foo_cof_con-food-coffee-consumption [nationmaster.com]
Hurray! (Score:2)
coffee alergie (Score:1)
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Maybe you'd do better if stuck to espresso during the day.
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Maybe you'd do better if you stuck to espresso during the day.
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Furthermore, I would like to know who paid for this study.
Maybe you should get another cup... or maybe you had too much and the jitters kept you from reading and digesting the summary, which stated right up front that it's the American Cancer Society?
There is a huge industry around coffee abuse.
How could one abuse coffee? Inject it intraveniously?
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Intravenous coffee seems like a damn good idea to me most mornings.
Sunrise (Score:1, Insightful)
Every day, about 310,000,000 Americans do not get cancer of any kind.
The Sun also rises every day.
Therefore, we can conclude with 95% confidence that Sunrise prevents cancer.
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Correlation does not imply causation (Score:1)
Repeat: Correlation does not imply causation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation [wikipedia.org]
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But it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing "look over there!"
It's the antioxidants (Score:4)
It's the same thing as with wine. Drinking some wine everyday isn't good for your heart because the wine is good for you. It's because of the antioxidants that were in the grapes.
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It's the same thing as with wine. Drinking some wine everyday isn't good for your heart because the wine is good for you. It's because of the antioxidants that were in the grapes.
That's not what the Mayo Clinic [mayoclinic.com] says. It does say that antioxidants are good for the heart, but it says grape juice is possibly as good.
Not scientifically proven, in other words.
Re:It's the antioxidants (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, that didn't work. People still got things like scurvy.
Then scientists discovered Vitamins. And they said "We now understand food. If people get enough of all of these, they'll be healthy."
Of course, that doesn't seem to be really working either. Even processed and refined food is often loaded with vitamins (100% Vitamin C!) because it's marketable.
Now recently scientists started to pay attention to these things called Polyphenols. There's thousands of different ones, found in food (well, natural foods); they're what "antioxidants" can be classified as. Not all that much is known about them so far (It doesn't pay much to do research in non-patentable stuff, like natural food). But I suspect they will eventually they'll become as common in dietery speak as the macro and micro nutrients are.
In short, food, and foods effects on the body are a very complex thing, and only fools believe we know all there is to be know about it.
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Back in the 1800s, scientists discovered the three macronutrients: carbs, protein, and fat. They said to themselves "We now understand food. If people get enough of all these three, they will be healthy."
Of course, that didn't work. People still got things like scurvy.
Then scientists discovered Vitamins. And they said "We now understand food. If people get enough of all of these, they'll be healthy."
Of course, that doesn't seem to be really working either. Even processed and refined food is often loaded with vitamins (100% Vitamin C!) because it's marketable.
Now recently scientists started to pay attention to these things called Polyphenols. There's thousands of different ones, found in food (well, natural foods); they're what "antioxidants" can be classified as. Not all that much is known about them so far (It doesn't pay much to do research in non-patentable stuff, like natural food). But I suspect they will eventually they'll become as common in dietery speak as the macro and micro nutrients are.
In short, food, and foods effects on the body are a very complex thing, and only fools believe we know all there is to be know about it.
Eh. You paint a bleak picture when you claim, "of course, that didn't work."
People are healthier today than they used to be, on average (if you discount the obesity problem that is, which has nothing to do with not understanding food: It has to do with eating too much of it and not getting enough exercise).
Let me put it this way. Athletes keep breaking records year after year. You'd figure we'd have plateaued by now. There are several reasons why we haven't, and a big part of it is that we understand n
AARP had this first... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bless the Maker and his coffee. (Score:3)
It is by coffee alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of the arabica bean that the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking. The shaking becomes a warning. It is by coffee alone I set my mind in motion.
Oh, is that so?! (Score:2)
... Time to drink tea :p
Ok ok ok... I'll uh I'lll, pour... uh ... (Score:2)
...pour ... get me uh, you know... uh... another cup ... of uh java... uh coffee...
Correlationn is not causation (Score:4, Insightful)
Not Fraud! (Score:1)
Because at 4 cups a day, you're not eating, so your cells split more slowly (about 20% slower)... And that reduces the risk of cancer, since there are fewer opportunities for cancer to develop.
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Because at 4 cups a day, you're not eating...
Not in my experience. Are you sure you were drinking coffee?
More FRAUD? Tomatoes stop mental problems? (Score:2)
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Duh. Obviously it's a wonder-food that is being slandered by Mormons, same as beer.
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If cash can cure AIDS [youtube.com], why not cancer too?
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When referring to food and drink, "rich" does not mean "expensive," it means "sumptuous". Rich food is not necessarily expensive, and expensive food is not necessarily rich.
Coffee is indeed sumptuous, but it isn't expensive unless you're stupid enough to buy it at Starbucks or even McDonald's. A ten dollar can of coffee will give you a fresh pot every morning for all month long. Ten dollars will buy you a dozen beers, or four two litre bottles of soda, or two gallons of milk. Coffee is one of the least expe
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Did the percentage of oral cancers go down because people died from diabetes?
What in the nine hells does diabetes have to do with coffee?
Hell, prior junk research has shown coffee drinkers have less of a risk for diabetes.
Oh, wait, you're confusing sludge and a pound of sugar (eg, Starbucks) with actual coffee. My bad.
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Well the starbucks drip coffee is actually pretty good but to expensive so I only drink it when someone gives me a giftcard. Not all of their coffee is drowned in sugar.
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You need to get out more. It's pretty bad. Colombian; available in 5lb bags at wally world is much, much better.
Sure compared to can coffee charbucks is pretty good. But dish water is pretty good compared to can coffee.
Hint: Many idiots think they can improve coffee by burning it, they should get better beans. Don't spend crazy money. Most of the super snooty coffee is faked for the label conscious hipster anyhow. There is more fake JBM and Kona then real, by far. You can be sold/served fake in Jamaica
Re:Possible FRAUD ALERT. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm VERY skeptical.
Seriously? Did you not RTFS? "The study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, was conducted using the Cancer Prevention Study II. The large cohort study began in 1982 by the American Cancer Society. Researchers were able to examine 968,432 men and women, none of whom had cancer at the time of their enrollment in the study."
What is someone who doesn't trust science fucking doing at slashdot, anyway? Go back to Sports Illustrated and leave us nerds alone, dumbass.
FRAUD? I don't know how it was accomplished. (Score:2)
Slashdot has a LONG history of running articles that are in fact advertisements, many people have said. (They call them Slashvertisements.)
Now we are seeing stories from Medical Daily.com [medicaldaily.com], a publication that seems to me to be EXTREMELY unreliable public relations.
Consider this: How did Slashdot become a medical web site?
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Consider this: How did Slashdot become a medical web site?
Slashdot has always been a science and technology website; science includes medicine. Search Google including the term site:slashdot.org. You'll find plenty of medical stories on the site from 10 years ago and earlier.
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I follow this simple rule: Just say no to drugs that's been transported in another animals lower intestine, and you're safe.
Luckily the cat's ass variant is optional...
Actually, I'm rather addicted to caffeine, and that's slightly annoying as I get sick if I don't get coffee for a day or two.
Other than that, it's a rather harmless drug. (In concentrations that won't kill you immediately.) and i really enjoy my coffee.
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If you don't fancy the civet coffee, maybe give this [theage.com.au] a try.
Re:Lurking variables... (Score:4, Interesting)
Neglects to mention that people who work in an occupation where they have an opportunity to get four cups of coffee a day are usually office or transport jobs.... not dangerous ones. Any thoughts?
I grew up in town where most people worked some sort of blue collar job, and I recall plenty of big coffee drinkers. I spent a summer working in a steel mill and it wasn't unusual to see guys arriving with large thermoses of coffee. Those that didn't bring it to work could purchase it from vending machines in the break rooms. A couple of cups before work, a couple during breaks or lunch, and by the end of the day they had had at least four cups of coffee.
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Mod parent up! Same goes for construction workers (at least when I was growing up). I'd go to the sites with my dad and most of the guys working had thermoses in-hand, hopefully with coffee inside...
Traditional coffee "cup" = 6 floz (Score:3)
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Nonsense, coffee cups come in all sizes, from your dinky little four ounce cups to a huge full pint cup. A cup is exactly half a pint, a little less than 1/4 of a litre.
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A metric cup is 250ml, which is exactly 1/4 of a litre (1000ml).
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He said American cup, America has cups and pints and quarts, not litres and millilitres. I imagine 250ml would be pretty much a standard cup anywhere else.
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HPV.
Your biggest risk for mouth cancer isn't chewing _tobacco_.
Chew, coffee, chew, coffee, chew, coffee.
No I can't imagine a way of combining actions. Coffee would have to be too cold.
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Seems like a modest amount to me. A cup is 8oz, so that's really just 2 16oz coffees. One in the morning and one at lunch, just right to get you through the day.