Stronger, blacker, richer coffee – the new drug of choice
The Daily Reflector
Saturday, October 22, 2005
The strong-coffee trend has created a lot of caffeine addicts and turned coffee shops into something resembling methadone clinics. Especially at 6 a.m.
Ordinarily, I still have at least 90 minutes of sleeping left to do at 6 a.m., but on a recent rare morning I was up at 5:30 to attend a meeting in Chapel Hill. I stopped at Starbucks on the way out of town for coffee and a Danish.
I observed a man – obviously a regular customer – step sleepily to the counter.
"How are we doing this morning?" asked the almost annoyingly chipper clerk.
In a deep, just-rolled-out-of-bed voice – and with perfect fog-horn pitch – the man answered, "Still strugglin'."
"We're here to help," the clerk reassured him after drawing his drug of choice from the tap.
It's a scene repeated all over the nation. Our craving for coffee is stronger than ever. Why?
I believe it has something to do with the success of the anti-smoking movement. Anyone who has been a smoker knows that nothing goes better with cigarettes than coffee. The mixture of caffeine and nicotine does something wonderful for the mind.
Also, strong black coffee can effectively mask the nasty aftertaste from cigarette smoke. The bad breath stays, but the aftertaste leaves.
We need caffeine in greater abundance now to make up for the loss of nicotine. That has to be why we're drinking darker, stronger coffee than we were before the anti-smoking movement took hold.
One might argue that my theory is flawed since many coffee addicts were never smokers. Wrong.
Before the anti-smoking movement, everyone breathed second-hand smoke in nearly all public places. Nonsmoking coffee drinkers were getting the same double-whammy dose of caffeine and nicotine without even trying.
Even children are starting to drink coffee. That fact prompted a study reported this week by The New York Times.
Those short people waiting in line at Starbucks, according to the study, would be short even without the coffee addiction. Decades of research on the physiological effects of coffee consumption, according to the article, offers no evidence that coffee will stunt human growth.
This is good news for my sister Sue Ellen. She frequents the Starbucks drive-through in her town so often they sometimes offer her freebies – beverages prepared wrongly or by mistake.
Recently, her 4-year-old daughter Emma Caroline was the recipient of one of these. It was a vanilla creme Frappuccino, which, to a kid, is a vanilla milkshake. If caffeine could stunt a child's growth, Sue Ellen said, Emma Caroline might never grow another inch after that drink.
"She drank that thing while I shopped in Target," my sister said. "She was literally doing jumping-jacks when we got to the checkout."
If you think you might be a coffee addict but are not sure, the people at Coffee Wholesale USA have kindly taken time out of their busy schedule of laughing all the way to the bank to list a few symptoms:
You'd be willing to spend time in a Turkish prison.
Your eyes stay open when you sneeze.
You have to watch videos in fast-forward.
You just completed another sweater and you don't know how to knit.
Juan Valdez named his donkey after you.
You grind your coffee beans in your mouth.
The good news from all of this: Your kids are less likely than ever before to start smoking.
The bad news: Your kids are more likely than ever before to grow very tall and keep you up nights dribbling a basketball.
For Your Coffee Fix... Get The Best Directly From The Roaster! Shop Here Now.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
The strong-coffee trend has created a lot of caffeine addicts and turned coffee shops into something resembling methadone clinics. Especially at 6 a.m.
Ordinarily, I still have at least 90 minutes of sleeping left to do at 6 a.m., but on a recent rare morning I was up at 5:30 to attend a meeting in Chapel Hill. I stopped at Starbucks on the way out of town for coffee and a Danish.
I observed a man – obviously a regular customer – step sleepily to the counter.
"How are we doing this morning?" asked the almost annoyingly chipper clerk.
In a deep, just-rolled-out-of-bed voice – and with perfect fog-horn pitch – the man answered, "Still strugglin'."
"We're here to help," the clerk reassured him after drawing his drug of choice from the tap.
It's a scene repeated all over the nation. Our craving for coffee is stronger than ever. Why?
I believe it has something to do with the success of the anti-smoking movement. Anyone who has been a smoker knows that nothing goes better with cigarettes than coffee. The mixture of caffeine and nicotine does something wonderful for the mind.
Also, strong black coffee can effectively mask the nasty aftertaste from cigarette smoke. The bad breath stays, but the aftertaste leaves.
We need caffeine in greater abundance now to make up for the loss of nicotine. That has to be why we're drinking darker, stronger coffee than we were before the anti-smoking movement took hold.
One might argue that my theory is flawed since many coffee addicts were never smokers. Wrong.
Before the anti-smoking movement, everyone breathed second-hand smoke in nearly all public places. Nonsmoking coffee drinkers were getting the same double-whammy dose of caffeine and nicotine without even trying.
Even children are starting to drink coffee. That fact prompted a study reported this week by The New York Times.
Those short people waiting in line at Starbucks, according to the study, would be short even without the coffee addiction. Decades of research on the physiological effects of coffee consumption, according to the article, offers no evidence that coffee will stunt human growth.
This is good news for my sister Sue Ellen. She frequents the Starbucks drive-through in her town so often they sometimes offer her freebies – beverages prepared wrongly or by mistake.
Recently, her 4-year-old daughter Emma Caroline was the recipient of one of these. It was a vanilla creme Frappuccino, which, to a kid, is a vanilla milkshake. If caffeine could stunt a child's growth, Sue Ellen said, Emma Caroline might never grow another inch after that drink.
"She drank that thing while I shopped in Target," my sister said. "She was literally doing jumping-jacks when we got to the checkout."
If you think you might be a coffee addict but are not sure, the people at Coffee Wholesale USA have kindly taken time out of their busy schedule of laughing all the way to the bank to list a few symptoms:
You'd be willing to spend time in a Turkish prison.
Your eyes stay open when you sneeze.
You have to watch videos in fast-forward.
You just completed another sweater and you don't know how to knit.
Juan Valdez named his donkey after you.
You grind your coffee beans in your mouth.
The good news from all of this: Your kids are less likely than ever before to start smoking.
The bad news: Your kids are more likely than ever before to grow very tall and keep you up nights dribbling a basketball.
For Your Coffee Fix... Get The Best Directly From The Roaster! Shop Here Now.
posted by Colin & Donna-Lee | 1:39 PM
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