Could caffeine cut obesity?: BBC News Review

Grab yourself a coffee.

A new study says that caffeine might be good for you.

This is News Review from BBC Learning English.

I'm Neil. And I'm Beth.

Make sure you watch to the end to learn vocabulary to talk about this story.

Don't forget to subscribe to our channel, like this video  

and try the quiz on our website. Now, the story.  

Caffeine could reduce your risk of obesity,

type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

That's according to a new study looking

into the effects of high caffeine levels in the blood.

Researchers found that if your body processes caffeine slowly,

you are likely to be thinner and have a lower risk of diabetes.

Scientists say further research needs to be done.

You've been looking at the headlines, Beth.

What's the vocabulary? We have:

fancy a cuppa,

turns out and how come.  

This is News Review from BBC Learning English.

Let's have a look at our first headline.

This is from Euro Weekly News.

Fancy a cuppa? New study links caffeine consumption

to reduced risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes.

  So, this headline starts with a question.

'Fancy a cuppa?'

Quite a strange-sounding question.

Can we break it down?

Well, here, 'fancy' means 'do you want'.

So, we could say, 'fancy a chat?' or 'fancy a film?'

And then we have 'a cuppa', which is the way

that we naturally pronounce 'a cup of' but, a cuppa what?

Because the headline doesn't say, No, the headline, doesn't say

but it is a cup of tea.

Maybe because in Britain we drink so much tea,

we just assume, when we use this expression,

'fancy a cuppa', we're talking about tea.

Yep. And the headline writer is saying

'fancy a cuppa?' as though they are offering the reader a cup of tea,

which of course contains caffeine.

This is friendly,

it's inviting, but also that cup of tea might have health benefits.

It might, yeah. Let's have a look at that again.

Let's look at our next headline.

This is from the Huffington Post.  

Turns out coffee has a health benefit

we've only just discovered.

We already know that coffee has a lot of health benefits,

but this report is saying

that the caffeine in coffee could also have health benefits.

We're looking at 'turns out' which is short for 'it turns out that'.

That's right. And when we use 'turns out',

it means that the result or outcome of something becomes known

and it's often something a bit surprising,

but it can be a positive or a negative surprise.

Yeah. Like in this headline,

it's something unexpected.

We're saying the results of this study show benefits

we didn't know about previously.

That's right and 'turns out' is used a lot in conversational English.

So, for example,

maybe I leave my umbrella at home because I think it's going to be dry,

but then I end up very wet and I say

'turns out it's raining.'

Yes, it can be positive as well. As you said, you could take an exam and think

'oh no, what a disaster, I have failed!'

But it turns out that you have passed.

Let's look at that again.

Let's have our next headline.

This is from Medical News Today.

How come higher blood

caffeine is linked to lower body fat and type 2 diabetes risk?

So, this headline is about this link between caffeine and health.

It starts with a question and it contains 'how come'.

We know those words 'how' and 'come',

but you put them together,

what's the sense? Well, 'how come' is another way of saying

'why', so an alternative question for the headline could be 'Why is higher blood

caffeine linked to lower body fat?'

Yep. So, that seems simple. 'how come' means 'why'.

But, there is an important difference in the way you use it. When we use

'how come' to ask a question,

we don't use the normal grammar for questions.

We don't say 'How come

did you go to the cinema?' We say 'How come you

went to the cinema?'

That's right, and intonation is important too

because you need to use that to make it sound like a question.

So, I could say, Neil,

how come you're wearing that shirt again?

I like this shirt.

There's another small difference between

'why' and 'how come', isn't there?

Yes. It's quite informal, so we can hear it a lot in conversational English.

Let's look at that again.

We've had: fancy a - do you want a,

turns out - the result is

and how come - why.

Don't forget there's a quiz on this page.

Thank you for joining us,

and goodbye. Bye.