Caffeine Tuesday, November 15, 2005

To quote Mike Patton:

Pour shame all over us
Harden into a crust
Cement 
Forget the glamour and
Mumble a jackhammer
Under your breath
Hide your face in the curtains
Better unsaid, so close
And it rolls off the tongue
Almost
The world expects the pose
Perfectly natural
Loosen up
Smearing wet concrete
And swearing you'll never be
Caught
At your weakest, etched in stone
And we're frozen here, peeking
Almost
sweet talk
Caffeine

Ah yes, caffeine. While I'm sure that the lyrics above have absolutely nothing to do with caffeine (or if they do, I fail to see how), it's a cool song. Really.

Anyway... this post is inspired by the loud conversation in the kitchen near my cube and another discussion I had gotten into with a coworker regarding the caffeine content of coffee and tea.

I'm sure you've heard it. "You know, tea has more caffeine than coffee." Well, if you're talking about tea leaves versus coffee beans, that may be true, but that's where the truism falls down. The truth is that in its prepared form, coffee absolutely, positively has more caffeine than tea.

Admittedly, there are a number of discrepancies between the figures cited on the internet, and that is likely because there are a number of variables that affect the actual amount of caffeine in the beverage, including how the beans are roasted, how the coffee is prepared, and the type of coffee you're talking about. But in no instance does any authoritative source claim that tea has even close to the same amount of caffeine as coffee, let alone more. In most cases, it looks like it's about a third to a half as much:

Source	Coffee	Tea
Wikipedia	40-120mg	12-55mg
Bunker and McWilliams in the Journal of American Diet (74:28-32, 1979) (as cited by CoffeeFAQ.com)	115-175mg	40-60mg
About.com	60-120mg	45mg
Center for Science in the Public Interest	135mg	35-40mg (Lipton)
Food and Drug Administration, et. al., as quoted here	110-150mg	9-50mg
European Food Information Council	85mg	50mg

So, stop repeating this evil slander of my favorite beverage. The authorities may not all agree on how much, but they all agree that coffee kicks tea's ass.