The study of 400,000 people is the largest ever done on the issue, and the results should reassure any coffee lovers who think it’s a guilty pleasure that may do harm.

“Our study suggests that’s really not the case,” said lead researcher Neal Freedman of the National Cancer Institute. “There may actually be a modest benefit of coffee drinking.”

No one knows why. Coffee contains a thousand things that can affect health, from helpful antioxidants to tiny amounts of substances linked to cancer. The most widely studied ingredient _ caffeine _ didn’t play a role in the new study’s results.

It’s not that earlier studies were wrong. There is evidence that coffee can raise LDL, or bad cholesterol, and blood pressure at least short-term, and those in turn can raise the risk of heart disease.

Even in the new study, it first seemed that coffee drinkers were more likely to die at any given time. But they also tended to smoke, drink more alcohol, eat more red meat and exercise less than non-coffee-drinkers. Once researchers took those things into account, a clear pattern emerged: Each cup of coffee per day nudged up the chances of living longer.

The study was done by the National Institutes of Health and AARP. The results are published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.

Careful, though–this doesn’t prove that coffee makes people live longer, only that the two seem related. Like most studies on diet and health, this one was based strictly on observing people’s habits and resulting health. So it can’t prove cause and effect.

But with so many people, more than a decade of follow-up and enough deaths to compare, “this is probably the best evidence we have” and are likely to get, said Dr. Frank Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health. He had no role in this study but helped lead a previous one that also found coffee beneficial.

The new one began in 1995 and involved AARP members ages 50 to 71 in California, Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Atlanta and Detroit. People who already had heart disease, a stroke or cancer weren’t included. Neither were folks at diet extremes _ too many or too few calories per day.

The rest gave information on coffee drinking once, at the start of the study. “People are fairly consistent in their coffee drinking over their lifetime,” so the single measure shouldn’t be a big limitation, Freedman said.

Of the 402,260 participants, about 42,000 drank no coffee. About 15,000 drank six cups or more a day. Most people had two or three.

By 2008, about 52,000 of them had died. Compared to those who drank no coffee, men who had two or three cups a day were 10 per cent less likely to die at any age. For women, it was 13 per cent.

Even a single cup a day seemed to lower risk a little: 6 per cent in men and 5 per cent in women. The strongest effect was in women who had four or five cups a day _ a 16 per cent lower risk of death.

None of these are big numbers, though, and Freedman can’t say how much extra life coffee might buy.

“I really can’t calculate that,” especially because smoking is a key factor that affects longevity at every age, he said.

Coffee drinkers were less likely to die from heart or respiratory disease, stroke, diabetes, injuries, accidents or infections. No effect was seen on cancer death risk, though.

Other research ties coffee drinking to lower levels of markers for inflammation and insulin resistance. Researchers also considered that people in poor health might refrain from drinking coffee and whether their abstention could bias the results. But the study excluded people with cancer and heart disease _ the most common health problems _ to minimize this chance. Also, the strongest benefits of coffee drinking were seen in people who were healthiest when the study began.

About two-thirds of study participants drank regular coffee, and the rest, decaf. The type of coffee made no difference in the results.

Hu had this advice for coffee lovers:

-Watch the sugar and cream. Extra calories and fat could negate any benefits from coffee.

-Drink filtered coffee rather than boiled–filtering removes compounds that raise LDL, the bad cholesterol.

Researchers did not look at tea, soda or other beverages but plan to in future analyses.

Lou and Mariann Maris have already compared them. Sipping a local brew at a lakefront coffee shop, the suburban Milwaukee couple told of how they missed coffee after briefly giving it up in the 1970s as part of a health kick that included transcendental meditation and eating vegetarian.

Mariann Maris switched to tea after being treated for breast cancer in 2008, but again missed the taste of coffee. It’s one of life’s great pleasures, especially because her husband makes it, she said.

“Nothing is as satisfying to me as a cup of coffee in the morning,” she said.

Lois Berrigan found that when she approached her local Sobeys store about providing some of the foods familiar to the people she was serving at the St. John’s Association for New Canadians.  Then just a small store, the manager agreed to stock specifically requested items.

Access to things like samosas, okra and a range of Halal products makes a big difference for new families, and to keeping these much needed members of the work force.  “Food is familiar.  It’s a little piece of home,” says Berrigan.  “It’s like Newfoundlanders with their salt beef.  If you went to Florida and someone invited you over for salt beef dinner, you’d think you had it made.”

Sobeys has seen the benefits too.  “The international aisle has become a key piece in the innovation and the new offering we have in the newly built stores,” says spokesperson Cynthia Thompson.

Dozens of Atlantic stores have expanded international food offerings due, in part, to demand from new Canadians settling in Atlantic Canada.

The rapporteur, Olivier De Schutter, has just wrapped up an official trip to investigate hunger and poor diet across Canada.

He says he has severe concerns about the ability of families on social assistance and aboriginal peoples to afford a balanced diet.

He is also struck by the high rates of obesity linked to poor diet, which costs the public health system dearly.

But Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says the United Nations is wasting time and money and undermining its own reputation by sending someone to investigate one of the wealthiest countries in the world while people are starving in developing nations.

This will be the theme of my blog over the next few months as I give you my insights and observations on what is happening in the food industry in Quebec.  I will also comment on the deployment of new technological advancements within our industry.

My name is François Bouchard and I was born in Montreal but worked in Ontario throughout my career. For the past 17 years I have operated a retail and virtual supermarket in the Nation’s Capital under the banner of The Country Grocer and Onlinegrocer.ca.

I joined this industry at the age of 15, and later became the first recipient of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers’ (CFIG) scholarship while pursuing my studies in Business at the University of Ottawa.

Twenty years later with the same passion, I became Chairman of CFIG and worked closely with our Quebec counterpart l ‘Association des Détaillants en Alimentation du Québec (ADA) to establish a long lasting relationship with the goal of exchanging ideas and working collectively on common issues to improve our industry.

My involvement with Ontario and Quebec based distributors such as Steinberg, Loeb and Oshawa Foods allowed me to understand and appreciate the differences between retailing in Quebec and the rest of Canada.

Having recognized this, we still share the same values, have the same concerns and are subject to similar regulations  When talking one on one with retailers we quickly realize that we have a lot more in common than meets the eye.

My goal is to demystify some of these cultural and language barriers, and share success stories that will allow you to improve your business without having to leave this great country.

During the past few weeks I have visited both Grocery Showcase West (GSW) in Vancouver and (SIAL) in Montreal, I have also visited retailers in both cities and can certainly confirm that retailing is alive and well in both sides of this country.

What we need to do is to share more of our best practices and successful retailing stories.

My other passion is technology and allowing customers the ability to use the new technological advances to improve their shopping experiences.

We have successfully operated a virtual supermarket for the past 15 years and have learned along the way and hopefully could help you minimize some of the mistakes and seize loss opportunities.

When asked what made me decide to start a virtual online concept I compare it to my grandfather taking phone orders and then having someone deliver the product on a bicycle…in today’s society they use their computer, phone or tablets and we use trucks, boats or planes to deliver their groceries…the technology and the transportation modes have changed but the concept remains the same … making the shopping experience that much more convenient and user friendly.

With these two passions I hope to keep give you insights and suggestions that will be beneficial to your business.

I invite you to share your experiences and best practices and welcome suggestions or topics of interest to food retailers.

The amendments would create two new tools, “Marketing Authorizations” and “Incorporation by Reference,” that Karen Proud, vice-president, federal government relations for the RCC in Ottawa, says could significantly benefit retailers–particularly those that create private-label brands–in their efforts to bring revamped products to market.

Proud says the tools would significantly streamline the regulatory process for incorporating an approved additive, vitamin or mineral nutrient in a product, or approving a new health claim on food.

Citric acid, for example, is commonly used as a food additive to adjust food acidity in everything from canned pears and canned bean sprouts to canned mackerel.

Over the past 12 years, Health Canada has received numerous requests to approve its use in products including canned peaches, canned beans, canned apples and frozen squid–each one requiring an amendment to the Food and Drug Regulations, some of which took years to go through.

Adopting the amendments, says Proud, could significantly reduce the amount of time needed to approve such proposals.

“If a company comes up with something that’s good, that’s safe, that’s going to make things better, it can get it to market more quickly,” says Proud. “The consumer benefits from being able to have access to that product as quickly as possible.”

The “Incorporation by Reference” would allow regulators to refer to accepted standards when introducing product innovations.

Again, this would expedite the process, although the RCC is more guarded in its support of this particular initiative.

We’re happy that they have the flexibility, we’re just suggesting they have enough governance around it, that industry is consulted and they’re incorporating well accepted, scientifically valid standards, says Proud.

Whether they’ll actually do so is another matter.

CIBC and Rogers Communications (owner of Canadian Grocer) announced a partnership Tuesday that will harness the Near Field Communication technology built into newer BlackBerrys, allowing the phones to act like a credit card at checkout.

The technology will work exclusively with CIBC credit card accounts and BlackBerrys on the Rogers network at launch, which is tentatively scheduled for “later this year.”

“Some people might not carry a wallet but they’ll always have their smartphone,” said David Williamson, senior executive vice president of retail and business banking for CIBC.

But consumer surveys suggest Canadians may not be all that keen on the notion of a digital wallet.

New research released Tuesday by Google suggested Canadians are lukewarm on the idea of using their phones to make online purchases. After speaking with 1,000 Canadian smartphone users, only 20 per cent said they had made a mobile purchase and only 16 per cent said they expected to boost their mobile shopping in the following year.

Meanwhile, a Mastercard research project called the Mobile Payments Readiness Index ranked Canada as the second-best of 34 global markets in terms of being set to embrace mobile transactions (Singapore ranked first).

But while Canada ranked high for its partnerships between banks and governments, and its business and regulatory environments, it was below average when it came to the consumer readiness metric.

Mastercard estimated only about 15 per cent of Canadian consumers were willing to use a mobile phone to pay in stores, which was two percentage points below the global average.

But Ian Shelley, a partner at KPMG, believes that figure is probably low-balling Canadian interest in the technology, which is sure to grow as word about it spreads.

“The 15 per cent number is really just the tech-savvy individuals who have kept up with the mobile payments agenda,” said Shelley.

“But once these sorts of announcements come up I think you’ll see much greater adoption.”

Adam Chow, 20, said the only thing holding him back from trying out the technology is his choice of phone, Apple’s iPhone. While CIBC said it would eventually make other phones compatible with its mobile payment system, probably starting with Google Android models, the latest iPhone doesn’t support NFC.

Chow could imagine wanting to pay with his phone, since he’d probably have it in his hand anyway while waiting in line.

“It’s quick, right, you have your phone in your hand, just wave it and the purchase is done.”

But it may be more difficult to sell the technology to some consumers early on, before the functionality is fully fleshed out,“ Shelley said.

“What makes this attractive for me today? Because I do have a wallet and it works quite well,” said Shelley when asked to predict consumer reaction.

But he said it probably won’t be long before other banks and credit card companies, as well as loyalty card programs, get involved.

Williamson admitted he’s anxious to see that happen.

“I’ve got two inches of cards for car rental places, hotel loyalty cards–this, that and everything kind of cards–so if I could put those on the phone, I could get rid of the ridiculous number of cards I carry,” he said.

“I’d be all over that.”

And don’t be surprised if digital government ID cards become a reality in the not-too-distant future, Shelley added.

The final report of the Task Force for the Payments System Review, which was commissioned by the federal government, called for a safe, secure form of digital ID to be created.

“Propel the build of a digital identification and authentication (DIA) regime to underpin a modernized payments system and protect Canadians’ privacy,” reads a recommendation in the report, which notes that federal and provincial governments have been proactive on digital ID talks.

“Thinking about the credentials you have in your wallet,” Shelley said, “pretty much any of them can go away.”

CIBC shares closed down 13 cents to $71.54 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Tuesday while Rogers shares closed up 38 cents at $35.88.

So far in fact, that if all the world’s residents lived like a typical Canadian, about three and a half planets like Earth would be needed to support their demands on natural resources.

That’s the statistic found in a report released by the World Wildlife Fund Tuesday.

The “Living Planet Report” says Canada has the eighth largest ecological footprint per person in the world. The footprint is based on the demands a country’s residents place on natural capital.

Qatar leads the list followed by Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Denmark. The United States ranks fifth, followed by Belgium and Australia. The Netherlands and Ireland round out the top 10.

“Our ecological footprint is way beyond a sustainable level,” Steven Price, WWF Canada’s conservation science director, told The Canadian Press.

“By not dialling that footprint down, we are jeopardizing our future descendants’ ability to enjoy a comparable lifestyle, because we’re eating away at their natural capital.”

The report has been published every two years since 1998. It describes the changing state of global biodiversity and the pressure placed on Earth from human consumption of natural resources.

In its latest edition, the publication says biodiversity has declined globally by about 30 per cent between 1970 and 2008 while demands on natural resources have gone up. Areas of high biodiversity are important, the report explains, because they provide important ecosystem services such as carbon storage, fuel wood, freshwater flow and fish stocks.

With the emphasis on ecosystem services, the WWF is trying to drive home the point this year that a large ecological footprint doesn’t just threaten wildlife, but also undermines nature’s ability to provide basics like clean air and fresh soil, which are often taken for granted.

“We’re trying to make an economic point and a vital human survival point,” said Price. “(Our ecological footprint) is actually undermining our own life support system that we use to sustain ourselves.”

The organization argues that Canada has an opportunity as a resource-rich country to protect the future by valuing the natural capital that is at the core of its economy and identity.

“To maintain our lifestyles we consume enormous and wasteful amounts of energy and goods,” said Price. “We believe we can dial that down greatly without undermining our livelihoods or health or our education and the other benefits that we enjoy.”

The way to do that, the organization argues, is for governments to employ conservation policies, alongside development projects, which will protect the country’s landscapes and reduce the use of fossil fuels over time.

On an individual level, Canadians should try to reduce their overall energy use and make greener consumption choices when they can, said Price.

That could be as simple as walking to the grocery store instead of driving and buying a green-certified product once there.

“We can actually live a better and healthier life by consuming less and more wisely,” he said.

The WWF report’s Canadian statistics don’t come as a surprise to at least one sustainability expert.

“As a rule, we use more water and we use more energy than most other countries per capita,” said University of Ottawa professor Andre Potworowski.

“There’s very little incentives or encouragement to use less.”

Part of Canada’s high energy consumption, Potworowski explained, comes from the country’s harsh climates, vast distances and the fact that it has large energy deposits of its own.

But while the country certainly could be using a lot less energy, and has the technology in place to do so, there isn’t any push from the government to do so, he said.

The Conservative government recently rolled a number of new environmental provisions into the federal budget implementation bill, sparking criticism that there will be a narrowing of public participation on environmental policy.

It is also in the process of abolishing the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, the federally funded advisory group formed to give advice and research on sustainable development.

Ottawa has a 2020 target to reduce emissions to 17 per cent below 2005 levels and has said it is committed to tackling climate change, but a recent audit of government regulations has shown reaching that target will be unlikely.

“We live in a political climate where environmental priorities are significantly scaled down,” Potworowski said. “There’s no political will and there’s no popular will to scale our environmental footprint down.”

Alliance Grain Traders said this week that its plans to build a $50-million pasta-processing plant in Regina are on hold.

The company wants to time to monitor developments in the North American grain industry, including the end of board’s monopoly and the proposed sale of Regina-based grain handler Viterra.

Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz says in an email to The Canadian Press that many reasons, including global economic instability, have made it difficult for industry to grow.

But he adds the government is pleased that Alliance Grain has committed to having shovels in the ground in 2013.

The plant was announced last fall with great fanfare as Prime Minister Stephen Harper stood in a pulse processing facility in Regina.

The World Health Organization’s tally of the latest global health statistics for the first time includes a look at blood pressure and glucose levels, two of the risk factors for diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Among the findings released Wednesday were that 29.2 per cent of men and 24.8 per cent of women have high blood pressure, while 9.8 per cent of men and 9.2 per cent of women have raised fasting blood glucose levels.

Officials in charge of compiling the yearly snapshot of statistics from 194 nations for the U.N. health agency say rich nations have exported some of their disease risk factors to the developing world.

Dr. Ties Boerma, director of WHO’s health statistics, said tobacco use, unhealthy diets and physical inactivity “are no longer diseases of just affluent countries.”

But the spread of smoking and a taste for fast, processed and salty foods is also hitting populations that are living longer.

“Globalization, urbanization and aging populations are spreading around the world, so four out of five deaths due to the so-called diseases of affluence are in low and middle-income countries,” Boerma said. “It’s also being a victim of your own success.”

Colin Mathers, who co-ordinates WHO statistics on mortality and disease, says obesity is “rising everywhere” even as many children lack enough to eat. WHO says in its latest report that child malnutrition remains the underlying cause of an estimated 35 per cent of all deaths among children under 5 years old.

But there’s good news too, say Boerma and Mathers.

Boerma cited “major progress” in fighting infectious diseases and malnutrition, as the proportion of children in developing countries who were underweight has declined to 18 per cent in 2010 from 29 per cent in 1990.

The number of women who died during childbirth declined 47 per cent over the same period to 287,000 deaths in 2010, down from 543,000 in 1990. That’s a drop of 3.1 per cent a year on average.

The mortality rate among also children declined 35 per cent between 1990 and 2010, WHO says. Still, almost 20 per cent of deaths in children under the age of five–mostly from pneumonia and diarrhea–are preventable by vaccines.

The chef, his wife and their two teenage sons are eating for a week on the equivalent of a food stamp budget in protest of potential cuts pending in Congress to the benefit program used by more than 46 million Americans.

That’s $31 per person for the week, or about $1.48 per meal each.

Goodbye restaurants, free nibbles on his talk show “The Chew” and all the luxe offerings at Eataly, the high-end New York City market he co-owns. Hello Trader Joe’s, Jack’s Dollar Store, Gristedes and Western Beef, a low-cost supermarket chain.

“I’m (expletive deleted) starving,” said Batali, who’s on the board of the food relief agency Food Bank for New York City, which issued the challenge to celeb pals like Batali and anybody else who wants to know what it’s like.

Batali said his first reaction when asked to join was a big “gulp,” then he realized while shopping for Friday’s start of the challenge that with a little forethought it wouldn’t be all that brutal.

One lesson: forget organic and anything pesticide- or hormone-free. “The organic word slides out and saves you about 50 per cent.”

So what’s on the Batali menu through Thursday? Lentil chili with onion, water and cumin was one dinner that came with a complaint from his wife when he bought two bags of lentils instead of one, until he convinced her the extra cost would mean cheap eats for the next day.

“Rice and beans is in my lunch every day,” Batali said. “We got a bag of mini gala apples for $3. We bought a pork shoulder roast for $8 and got two and a half meals out of it. I got a whole chicken for $5, but it was spoiled so I had to return it and got a $7 chicken instead. They were out of $5 chickens.”

Convenience also has been sacrificed, like the afternoon his boys, 14 and 15, were running late and the family really wanted to grab hot dogs before a basketball game but couldn’t.

His kids are doing well and didn’t have to be dragged into what Batali described as less of a publicity stunt and more of a conversation starter about what it means to be hungry in America today.

“They’re having more peanut butter and jelly than they’ve had in the last 10 years because bread is inexpensive and peanut butter and jelly, if you buy it at the right place at the right time, is cheap,” Batali said.

Also, the boys are eating school lunch, as those in low-income families do for free.

The Batalis have been joined on the weeklong challenge by wholesale meat purveyor Pat LaFrieda, who has a new Food Network series, “Meat Men,” Margarette Purvis, who heads the food bank, as well as more than 200 others who registered to complete the challenge. And anti-hunger groups in Las Vegas, Philadelphia and parts of Maryland and Ohio have led similar challenges over the last several months.

“Nearly 3 million New Yorkers have difficulty paying for the food they need,” Purvis said. “They live in every single neighbourhood. We’re not trying to compare the food stamp challenge to the very real challenges people face. We’re just trying to raise awareness that it’s no longer just the homeless. It’s working families who use the food stamp program. It’s seniors. It’s a lot more children, in every single neighbourhood.”

Any surprises for the chef?

“I thought spare ribs were cheap,” Batali said. “Spare ribs this week are $5.95, so I’m making pasta sauce with two pork chops that were $1.39 a pound. It won’t have as many bones to chew on but it’ll have more edible meat, which at the end of the day is probably a better deal.”

Batali has taken his challenge to “The Chew,” where he and his crew will be chatting all week about eating on less.

“We, hopefully, aren’t pretending or being like a bunch of yuppies saying, ‘Oh yeah, this is how you can do it. Look, we can grind our own oats!’ We want people to think about calling and talking to their representation about cuts to the Farm Bill and the food stamp program,” he said.

Subsisting on food stamps, especially when food is made from scratch, is doable, he said, “as a way to live, but certainly not as a way to thrive. You can always have pasta with tomato, but that’s not thriving.”