American caffeine addiction races full speed ahead - Washington Times
Oil and coffee “are two dark, black liquids that run this country,” says Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. The standard 16-ounce cup of Starbucks coffee contains 330 mg of caffeine — the equivalent of three No-Doz pills.
When future talking-monkey archaeologists sift through the detritus of postapocalyptic America, they would do well to ignore the usual cultural Rosetta Stones — the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, seven seasons and counting of "The Real Housewives of Orange County."
They should focus instead on a single artifact: the AeroShot caffeine inhaler.
Sleek and plastic, the size of a lip balm tube, the AeroShot is the brainchild of David Edwards, a Harvard professor of biomedical engineering who also invented breathable chocolate. (Don't ask.) The AeroShot contains a puff of lime-flavored caffeine powder; one squeeze, and it dispenses about 40 mg of the drug in your mouth, like an asthma inhaler.
A startup product recently released in the Boston area, the AeroShot already has drawn the ire of Sen. Charles E. Schumer. In December, the New York Democrat expressed concern that the inhaler would be used as a "party enhancer" and asked the Food and Drug Administration to review the safety and legality of selling it to children.
In doing so, Mr. Schumer overlooked the obvious: When it comes to the nation's predilection for energy-boosting enhancement — at parties, at the office or anywhere in between, for young and old alike — the horse has long since left the barn, if only to lap up a double espresso at the neighboring Starbucks. (Speaking of which, the coffee bar chain briefly pilot-tested its own caffeine inhaler in 2006, one with mint flavor instead of lime.)
"At the time we came up with the AeroShot, we were looking at breathable coffee, breathable vitamins, the most high-value ingredient the product could have," Mr. Edwards said. "We came up with energy. There is a big demand for energy in the United States."
One nation under a buzz
...To understand the depths of our perked-up desire, consider:
• The average American ingests as much as 300 mg of caffeine a day, equal to three No-Doz pills;
• From June 2010 to June 2011, amid ongoing economic malaise, energy drink sales rose a whopping 31.6 percent.
• At an Army lab in Natick, Mass., military scientists reportedly have taken time out from developing Global Positioning System-guided helicopters to test and develop ... caffeinated meat.
Or, just visit a Starbucks.
Once upon a time — say, the 1950s — there was the standard, 5-ounce cup o' Joe, containing about 70 mg to 100 mg of caffeine. Quaint. In the here and now, the standard16-ounce cup of regular Starbucks coffee contains 330 mg of the same substance.
"There are two dark, black liquids that run this country," said Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. "Oil and coffee. Walk down the street in any major city at lunch hour. You just see coffee and cell phones."
...According to historian David T. Courtwright, American per capita coffee consumption rose from three pounds per year in 1830 to eight pounds per year by 1859. Today, the National Coffee Association reports that the number of 18- to 39-year-olds who drink coffee daily jumped almost 10 percent year-over-year in 2011.
Remember, that's in a country where about 90 percent of the adult population already ingests caffeine on a daily basis. A country where all of the coffee sold at our 10,000-plus Starbucks locations amounts to less than 4 percent of the domestic market for brewed coffee.
Is it any wonder that coffee is the world's second-most valuable commodity, behind only oil?
Beyond java, we have caffeinated lip balm. Caffeinated sunflower seeds. Caffeinated soap. We have caffeine mixed with gobs of sugar — that tasty Frappuccino isn't sweet on its own — and with all sorts of other chemicals, energy drink mystery ingredients like taurine, guarana and L-carnitine. We even have something called the "5150 Juice Syringe," available online, which basically allows you to squirt an extra helping of liquid caffeine into whatever you're already drinking.
The surest cultural signs our fair republic has become akin to a coffee-and-greenie-fueled Major League Baseball clubhouse, circa 1975?
(a) Vice-free, clean-living Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow endorses an energy drink.
(b) Elite Northwest Washington private school Sidwell Friends — where the Obama daughters go to school — has its own coffee bar.
(c) We don't just drink vodka. We drink vodka mixed with the up-all-night energy drink Red Bull - because even our downers need uppers.
...The history of caffeine consumption is more or less the history of the modern world, according to Mr. Weinberg and co-author Bonnie Bealer. Prior to the 1700s, Europeans drank copious amounts of beer — even for breakfast — because water was largely unsafe.
With the widespread adoption of coffee and tea, however, Western civilization swapped its daylong, semi-drunk alcoholic stupor for energy, alertness, attentiveness and sociability. One result? Intellectuals gathered in coffee shops, spawning (among other things) the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
"Visit churches in Europe, and the tour guides will constantly point out that so-and-so fell off the rafters," Mr. Weinberg said. "The reason they fell off is that they were drunk all the time.
"When caffeine swept over Europe, it changed the nature of society. It gave people a way to control and harness their energies, helped to initiate the industrial economy. That requires a different kind of discipline and mental focus than agrarian work."
As for today? We're stressed and squeezed by economic turmoil in a hypercompetitive global economy that places a premium on knowledge and mental-task completion. We're surrounded by round-the-clock entertainment, stimulated at every turn. We're a nation of working fathers and mothers, strapped for family time. We're an older generation of baby boomers who refuse to dodder into our golden years and a younger cohort of millennials who keep our smart phones bedside.
In short, we need caffeine — and other energy boosters — more than ever. The rise of Starbucks corresponds with the rise of the Internet.
"What's really boosted this up in the past 20 years is that now everybody is connected to a portable transmission and reception device, expected and available to be working all the time," Mr. Thompson said. "It used to be you went home at 5:30, then got into the office the next morning and had messages. Now, you're constantly checking email. Our lifestyles need stimulants to keep up with things."...
...Consider an executive X who gets up at 5:30 a.m. every day, proposes Mr. Thompson. "Could she or he not do their job without a certain dosage of caffeine a day? If the answer to that is no, that's an interesting thing to consider."
Every year I have my usual resolutions (weight exercise, etc) but one thing I have done in the last two year. Reduce the amount of caffeine I take in by limiting Diet Cokes and morning coffee. But I'm probably still above the 300mg reported in this article. When someone says that's still too much my retort is:
1. I never smoked cigarette like most of the family.
2. I'm not the alcoholic half the family is.
3. I never used narcotics.
The only thing I abuse is caffeine. Cut me some freaking slack! And if is pisses off Schumer you know there is something right about it!
No comments:
Post a Comment