Just once, I wish I knew for certain which foods, drinks, and lifestyle choices are, and will remain, healthy for at least a short amount of time.

One day, bread is bad. Then it’s good. Another day, aspirin is found to thin blood but raise blood pressure. Red meat is bad. No, it’s good. And, don’t get started on the incredible, edible egg.

In the midst of the turmoil created by certain foodstuffs being heralded as good one day and bad the next comes the remarkable news that a Brooklyn College study shows drinking four or more six-ounce cups of coffee a day reduces your risk of dying of heart disease by 53 percent! Holy cow. The same ‘Joe’ that makes your heart bounce around like a basketball in the hands of Steve Nash may actually be heart healthy? What’s next? A report that smoking two packs of cigarettes a day will not only clean and strengthen one’s lungs, but forestall certain types of cancer?

BC’s counter-intuitive finding has to be huge news for Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks and other purveyors of the powerful, little caffeine bean. But, the whole thing leaves me scratching my head. I know when I’ve reached my caffeine limit. And four is two too many.

Put four cups down my hatch and you’re looking at a category five hurricane, a 9.0 earthquake on the Richter Scale and a world-class Nor’easter all rolled into one.

While I intend to stay away from the four-cups-a-day dictum, others won’t. And that got me thinking about all sorts of unintended side effects (and marketing opportunities for certain companies) including:

– a rise in insomnia (I know I can’t drink coffee after 4pm or I’ll be watching Conan with eyes wide open at 1am the next morning)

– a rise in those "Gotta go. Gotta go" TV commercials for men. Coffee does have a way of whipping through the system at Mach speed. Can you imagine what four cups of Joe would do to those poor bastards already suffering from enlarged prostates? Get out of the way!

– a rise in adult diapers. Sad, but true. Coping copious amounts of Joe will be akin to pouring gasoline on fire in the case of already incontinent Americans.

The big winner in the ‘four cups findings’ is Corporate America. Fueled by twice as much Joe as usual, assembly lines and office cubicles will be churning out work faster than one can ask, milk or sugar?. And, global competitiveness? Fuggetaboutit. It’s no longer a worry now that four cups of coffee is considered heart healthy. So, drink up, America (at least until the next coffee study comes along).

Thanks to Repman Jr. for the idea.