Caffeine: Good or Bad?
Depending on your source of information, caffeine may be good for you or caffeine may be bad for you. Well, which one is it really? Deciding whether caffeine is good or bad is an example of the: “it depends on the way you look at it” frame of mind which tends to scare people nowadays. We continue to live in an increasingly standardized, one-size-fits-all world. Maybe it’s not our choice, maybe that’s the way big business, politicians and those in charge of the educational system want us to see it. As with everything else, individual reactions to caffeine will vary from one person to another. You should take your tolerance to caffeine as an example. Some people can sit down at an all-you-can-eat buffet and literally consume all they can eat and yet they never gain weight, others might take some little bit of food and gain a disproportional amount in weight. This analogy also applies when you think of the various levels of tolerance people have when it comes to the effects of caffeine. A single cup of java may leave someone jittery for the rest of the whole day but someone may take 20oz Mountain Dew bottles one after another all day long and still get to sleep by 10:00. While tolerance can vary significantly, caffeine does seem to affect children and older people more effectively.
What about dosage? Does it really matter? Regardless of the nature of your tolerance level, the advantages of caffeine really depend on how much of it you consume. Scientific studies have shown that a low or moderate consumption of caffeine will stimulate both mental and physical alertness without causing any side effects. But how exactly do you define low or moderate caffeine consumption. Well except when you consider ill health or pregnancy conditions, the recommended daily intake for caffeine is 85mg for children and 300mg for adults. Using this as a baseline, an adult would probably get the desired effects from caffeine by taking anything around 200mg of caffeine on a daily basis. If you exceed the 300mg mark, the chances are that you’ll most likely be visited by headaches as well as other symptoms that are bound to cause anxiety, irritability and insomnia. In order to get the most out of caffeine consumption, it is important to ensure that your consumption is in moderation.
If you want the powerful qualities of caffeine without the side-effects, which beverage is really going to give you the most value for money? When you really come to think of it most people think of a caffeine jolt and the toasty aroma of Arabica beans brewing. Coffee is always thought of as king when it comes to caffeine, but is this really the case? Despite the prevalence of Starbucks in America, most Americans drink more caffeinated soda in a year than they drink coffee. Therefore would it be correct to state that soft drinks are the new king of caffeine? Well they do sell more but they don’t contain as much caffeine as the average cup of coffee. Even a 12oz can of Mountain Dew pales in comparison to a 5oz cup of ground coffee brewed through the drip method. Doing the Dew grants you only 54mg of caffeine, while that cup of coffee could net you anywhere from twice that to almost 200 mg. Of course, let’s be honest, who drinks their coffee out of a 5oz cup anymore? But then again, who drinks only a can of Mountain Dew? The answer to the question “Who is the Caffeine King?” is all relative depending on what you take and how you take it.
Darren Williger is a tea drinking, guitar playing, meditating, wine making sales maker who writes for CaffeineZone.com, SavoryTea.com, and MindSatori.com.
