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Published: July 27, 2016, 7 p.m.

Coffee is serious business. We Americans drink about 400 million cups of it per day and spend several billion dollars on it each year. It\u2019s the most popular drug on earth, and certainly the most socially acceptable. In many ways, coffee\u2019s the closest thing we\u2019ve got to a universal, daily ritual, as just about every morning, billions of people across the planet prostrate themselves before the holy, energy-giving legume.\xa0It also hails from the same place the earliest members of our species do: East Africa (Ethiopia, to be exact). That the most industrious animal ever to walk the planet and the psychoactive legume that fuels said industry both hail from the same place on earth is pure poetry.

Coffee\u2019s also delicious. I\u2019d say you\u2019d have to pry my coffee from my cold, dead fingers, only the ensuing struggle would slosh it all onto the floor, and that\xa0would be such a waste.

Yet it\u2019s also considered to be a vice,\xa0one of those substances that \u201ceveryone knows\u201d is bad for you.

Is it? \xa0 (This Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Leaman)