A daily coffee can help you live longer. That coffee frappe? Not so much.

For years, science has known about the link between longer life and coffee consumption. But a new study, for the first time, weighs the effects of sweeteners.

The findings suggest that the morning coffee routine is healthy – as long as you don't overdo the sugar.

The study, published in the "Annals of Internal Medicine" journal, concludes that people who drank 1.5 to 3.5 cups of coffee per day, even with a teaspoon of sugar, were up to 30% less likely to die during the study period than those who didn't drink coffee. 

"It's huge. There are very few things that reduce your mortality by 30%," Christina Wee, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a deputy editor of the journal, told the New York Times.

Researchers looked at demographic, lifestyle, and dietary information collected from more than 170,000 adults between 37 and 73 years old over several years. The mortality risk was lower for people who drank both decaffeinated and caffeinated coffee. Data were inconclusive for those who drank coffee with artificial sweeteners.

However, the health benefits likely do not extend to highly sweetened and modified coffee drinks that have gone viral on TikTok. The sweeter drinks appear to negate or reduce the health benefits of coffee.

The study's average amount of added sugar per cup of sweetened coffee was a little over a teaspoon, far less than what typically goes into many sugary coffee drinks. For example, Starbucks nutrition data reports a Grande (16-ounce) Caramel Macchiato at Starbucks contains 54 grams of sugar, about seven times more than sweetened coffee in the study.

 This is only the latest in the long-debated history of coffee's health effects. Though it was listed as a possible carcinogen in the 1990s, ensuing research found that coffee actually decreases the risk of some types of cancer. Plus, research has found links between coffee consumption and reduced risk of diabetes, stroke, depression, Parkinson's disease, dementia, and gallstones.

 The bottom line seems to be that, taken in moderation, coffee can offer real health advantages. And, don't forget the other benefits.

We agree with the anonymous philosopher who famously said, "A bad day with coffee is better than a good day without it."