Daily coffee drinking linked to major health benefit in women as they age, study finds

That's according to new research from Harvard University, which followed a group of nearly 50,000 women from the Nurses' Health Study for a 30-year period.

The women who qualified as "healthy agers" were found to consume an average of 315 mg of caffeine daily, primarily via coffee-drinking.

Although soda also contains caffeine, people who drank it every day were shown to have a 20% to 26% reduced chance of healthy aging.

The findings were set to be presented on Monday at NUTRITION 2025, the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition held in Orlando.

"While past studies have linked coffee to individual health outcomes, our study is the first to assess coffee's impact across multiple domains of aging over three decades," said Mahdavi.

The researcher acknowledged that the study has some limitations.

"As with all observational studies, we cannot establish causality," she told Fox News Digital. "While we adjusted for many factors, unmeasured confounding is always possible."

"Further work is needed to confirm generalizability to broader populations."

Coffee's benefits are "relatively modest" compared to the benefits of overall healthy lifestyle habits, according to the researcher. 

Mahdavi emphasized, however, that nutrition, regular exercise and not smoking are the "most powerful and proven contributors" to healthy aging.

"Genetic and hormonal differences may also shape how individuals respond, which could pave the way for more personalized guidance in the future."