How important is coffee?

[Peelee]

"A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems."
-- Alfréd Rényi (often erroneously attributed to Paul Erdős)

"I can fix that."
-- Wolfgang Pauli

[Altheus]

Surprised no-one has dropped this yet.

It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion
It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed
The hands develop shakes, the shakes become a warning
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion

[Spore]

But if somebody tells me BEER, or TEQUILA is super-important in their life and has giant containers for it proclaiming it a key stat boosting whatever...I'm going to express concern and probably start looking for signs of alcoholism.

I don't want to tell you how to live your life but maybe you would enjoy being a bit less judgmental against groups of people who just LIKE stuff. I can see the reasoning and the parallels behind it.

I have even tried some very good whiskey and rum, and the only thing it did do is remove the burning aftertaste of it, so I kinda get where you get your opinion from. And I drink my coffee more habitual than anything else (it's a ritual kind of thing). In general I feel the whole "food/drink x or y has won prize z" to be utterly ridiculous.

That just means it tasted well for some weird judge who is so far removed from my culinary world that said price won't even mean anything to me. Because ultimatively tastes are subjective and not quantifiable (except for a chemist with concentrations of aromatic components of course but that is a different topic). And with my tiny rant here I don't want to say you should not openly judge people for enjoying things. I realize you are probably well adjusted enough not to yell at coffee shop customers. What I ask of you is calmly ask yourself if that judgment is justified in your mind.

I have a similar mental blockade when it comes to people who "enjoy food" but are obviously overeating a lot. If you'd love good food so much you would not look this way. But this is a generalization just like your "coffee is a tool, not a tasty beverage" bit.

[Scarlet Knight]

... But if somebody tells me BEER, or TEQUILA is super-important in their life and has giant containers for it proclaiming it a key stat boosting whatever...I'm going to express concern and probably start looking for signs of alcoholism.

I understand. Now, if it was RUM, BEER, or TEQUILA in giant containers then you've just wandered into some Parrotheads at a Buffett concert.

Tomorrow is Sunday and I think life is so wonderful when I've got my newspaper, hot coffee, and the time to enjoy both.

[Palanan]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet:

Girl Genius: Coffee's Ready!

Be sure to read the next three pages, for the full Heterodyne coffee experience.

[Bartmanhomer]

We should have a coffee tournament.

[Brother Oni]

Basically, studies showed, if you are a habitual coffe drinker, that cup only takes you to a normal level you'd have had if you didn't drink coffee.

Which means that coffe cup in the worning that wakes us up, gets us to the exact same place a non-drinker already was.

Is that including normalisation for sleep levels?

I can see a habitual coffee drinker on 6 hrs sleep being on par with a normal fully rested person (after their first cup of course).

Allow the normal person only 6 hrs sleep and there should be a performance drop in comparison.

Taking it to a more extreme, allow both only 4 hrs sleep and while the coffee drinker will be almost be at normal performance with a few extra cups, the normal person won't be great.

[Spore]

If you start your sentence with "studies showed" and don't link a study, your argument is incomplete.

Secondly, with my understanding of biochemistry, the effect you told us about is for people who have constantly caffeine in their system which is about 4-6 hours. So if you space out a coffee with every meal (or even just breakfast and "tea time"/coffee time you reduce its effect.

But without any linked studies, the magnitude of said reduction in effect is called into question. I've had days with 3-4 hours of sleep and the drop in performance was absolutely visible after about 3 hours. I drank about 8ish coffees to stay awake but they relatively quickly dont do anything.

[sktarq]

I don't want to tell you how to live your life but maybe you would enjoy being a bit less judgmental against groups of people who just LIKE stuff. I can see the reasoning and the parallels behind it.
.... What I ask of you is calmly ask yourself if that judgment is justified in your mind.

i think it is absolutely justified. Mostly because I don't judge people for liking something. Or even that it is important to them personally (those super-into-coffee types who grade and compete over it, its important to them for example-and actually I laud them for it). Mostly they just really enjoy something and like to share that enjoyment. I have even found versions of things I used to only dislike through such people-they know the oddities, what to pick if you dislike X, Y, or Z, or how to mix one thing with another to achieve something new. Hell I hang out at coffee shops because i tend to like the humans that like the sort of place that hires such people as staff which is why they got into trying to find a coffee I'd like and why I tried the stuff they offered.

Its when people declare it IMPORTANT (outside of say a sociological or economic discussion) and the implied push that I should that I snarl at. It is generalization that take umbrage at. To me that opening pick is ...pushy. There can be a real "and if you disagree you're wrong" attitude that goes with it.

Admittedly having coffee, tequila, Sriracha , and Energy drinks (Red Bull and Monster) all having been pushed hard at me socially with my "No thank you I don't personally like X" being taken as a personal attack may have shaped this. Specifically those who tended to have the X is IMPORTANT attitude also were much more likely, disproportionately so, to take my personal dislike of their favored consumable as an attack on their own person. Between that an enough exposure to implied normalization of how addicts tend to see the world (that everyone has a full bottle whenever they drink for example) ... a bias may well have formed.

It threat was "How Great is Coffee" I'd have different feelings about it.

[Brother Oni]

But without any linked studies, the magnitude of said reduction in effect is called into question. I've had days with 3-4 hours of sleep and the drop in performance was absolutely visible after about 3 hours. I drank about 8ish coffees to stay awake but they relatively quickly dont do anything.

I'd think that there are more variables in play here, like body weight, caffeine sensitivity and dosage form.

Assuming 1 teaspoon of instant coffee per serving, that's ~40mg of caffeine. 8 x 40 = 320 mg of caffeine, which is a reasonable amount.

My personal daily intake is around 300 mg - if I'm stressed or don't have time to sleep, I've gone as high as 500 mg during a 12 hr shift*, but then I'm feeling like I'm running on pure electricity with a resting heart rate of around 110 bpm.

This was with coffee and energy drinks though - taking the same dose of caffeine as Proplus pills just puts me to sleep, so I'm sure there's some absorption factor going on as well..


*Please don't do this unless you have no choice. The recommend guidance is no more than 6 mg caffeine per kg of body weight and 500 mg is still within my personal safety limits and (quite high) caffeine tolerance levels.

[snowblizz]

Is that including normalisation for sleep levels?

I can see a habitual coffee drinker on 6 hrs sleep being on par with a normal fully rested person (after their first cup of course).

Allow the normal person only 6 hrs sleep and there should be a performance drop in comparison.

Taking it to a more extreme, allow both only 4 hrs sleep and while the coffee drinker will be almost be at normal performance with a few extra cups, the normal person won't be great.

It wasn't my study. I don't remember the specifics. I only remember the main point made. It was brought up in some documentary or other on tv. One of those BBC thisishowstuff/bodyworks or something.
{Scrubbed}

[Kiljori]

How important is coffee?

I'll cut out your heretic tongue for questioning the value of the Dark Brew Lord!

[Spore]

So I took this thread as inspiration to cut my coffee usage down a bit. And it improves my overall fitness. My work is tiring, so I tend to abuse the substance more than just enjoying it. But it has a weird effect on my blood sugar levels (I assume I don't measure). I could resist sweet cravings a lot better this week when I only drank a double cup for breakfast (along with having the time to actually eat).

So I guess coffee is not so much important as it is a stimulant that needs to be actively monitored.

[mrgrtt123]

How important is coffee?

I can't survive a day without a cup of coffee.

[rcom12]

How important is coffee?

I can't survive a day without a cup of coffee.

I try to limit myself to three cups of coffee a day,can't be less.

[thirsting]

So I took this thread as inspiration to cut my coffee usage down a bit. --

Cutting down on coffee may help cutting down on other cravings? I'm going to use you as my inspiration and try the same.

[snowblizz]

Cutting down on coffee may help cutting down on other cravings? I'm going to use you as my inspiration and try the same.

I for one have a 50/50 chance of grabbing something sweet with my coffee. And if I can't find something am seriously annoyed I don't have any.

[Brother Oni]

I for one have a 50/50 chance of grabbing something sweet with my coffee. And if I can't find something am seriously annoyed I don't have any.

Huh. I use coffee as an appetite suppressant so that I'm not tempted to grab something extra.

[snowblizz]

Sugar brings out the flavour of coffee. Or at least stimulates/reinvigorates the tastebuds somehow.

I'm once again reminded of one of the multitude of documentaries I've seen but can't really source, showing an experiment where just the raw flavour didn't provide any taste for people until they were also given sugar. ANother exampel they gave was that chewing gum doens't lose it's taste, when you stop tasting it you've extracted the sugar (or substitute) from it. If you add some tablesugar eg the gum starts tasting again. It's kinda weird, but works.


It's largely a learned behaviour for me I guess, but I tend to associated coffe with food. Breakfast + bun on weekends. Coffee after lunch. Coffee with something on coffeebreaks sometimes.

If I drink coffee on an empty stomach I get more hungry really. Not immediately, but quite soon after.

[Spore]

Sugar and fat enhance tastes, yes.

[Bartmanhomer]

Coffee Tiara Magic!

[The Fury]

My Coffee Story, by The Fury

The other day I saw a pot with free coffee so I went over and poured myself a cup. There was sugar, cream and various other things next to the pot of course. I just ignored them and put the lid back on my travel mug. When the woman standing next to me asked, "You don't put anything in your coffee?"

"I don't, no."

"Doesn't preferring black coffee mean you have an unpleasant personality?"

"...It does?"

Someone else chimed in, "I think I read something about how mentally ill people prefer black coffee."

I was sort of offended for a split second, then it occurred to me, that those statements might not be generally true, they were true for me. I just ended the conversation with "...Yep. Y'all got me pegged."

[EmmaQ]

I recently found out that caffeine promotes weight loss. Therefore, it is better to drink plain black coffee without milk. Coffee also adds energy. But coffee negatively affects the heart

[Chronos]

I'm mostly a tea drinker (though also enjoy cocoa, because who doesn't like chocolate?). Friends who really like coffee have introduced me to very good coffee varieties. I found they tasted less foul than usual. I probably could acquire the taste, but I haven't felt any need to.

And there's a huge variety in tea quality, too, and most Americans, when they drink tea at all, settle for really low quality. The irony is that, while, yes, the highest-quality teas are more expensive, the absolute cheapest tea available, the stuff from Aldi, is actually a pretty good one (not the best, but pretty good), certainly better than what most Americans drink.

And yeah, to the point of the thread, the primary effect of caffeine is to alleviate the effects of caffeine withdrawal.