...and then they put chocolate sauce on top...

I was at Panera the other day and ordered one of their Frozen Mochas (SO good!) and it got me thinking about the few carefully selected caffeinated beverages in my life and what their effect on me might be.

I'm no hard-core coffee drinker. My more serious coffee-loving friends laugh at me because I almost always opt for the beverage that sounds most like a bakery item (i.e., "Oooh, look, they have Caramel-Vanilla Nut Swirl..."), and I add enough sweetener, chocolate bits and/or whipped cream to it that it really tastes like a dessert by the time I'm ready for the first sip. However, when I came across the article below from the Oprah-sanctioned YOU Docs, Dr. Roizen and Dr. Oz, I figured, hey, another cup or two of coffee a day wouldn't be the worst vice I could add to my collection...

"If you sometimes have trouble cutting yourself off after only one cup of coffee in the morning, don't fret. Actually, going back for a refill might not be a bad move. A few recent large-scale studies have uncovered some new by-the-cup health benefits of coffee. Check 'em out:

1 cup . . . may lower your risk of cancer. A 13-year Japanese study revealed that men and women who drank a cup or more a day were half as likely to develop cancer of the mouth, pharynx, and esophagus compared with people who didn't drink coffee.

2 cups . . . may fend off strokes. In a 24-year study, women who drank 2-3 cups a day were 19 percent less likely to have a stroke compared with women who drank less than a cup a month. One caveat: The benefit applied only to nonsmoking women with no history of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes.

3 cups . . . may safeguard your neurons. Middle-aged adults who reported drinking at least 3 cups of coffee a day were 65 percent less likely to have developed dementia or Alzheimer's by the time most of the group had reached their mid-sixties to seventies.

What's in Those Magic Beans? Although it's not clear how coffee does all of these wonderful, protective things, researchers suspect that the coffee bean's high level of inflammation-fighting antioxidants (called polyphenols) may have something to do with it.

RealAge Benefit: Enjoying coffee if you like it -- and it likes you -- can make your RealAge 0.3 years younger."

Are you a coffee drinker? Hot or iced? Prefer tea? Black or green? Hot cocoa? (I like all of the above. :)

On a different note, what goes better with your favorite beverage than a book? My friend and Girlfriends Cyber Circuit pal Nadine Dajani is celebrating the rerelease of her latest novel CUTTING LOOSE with giveaways, excerpts and lots of book news. Check out her blog for all the fun contest details!!