slimvictor
Bluelight Crew
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- Dec 29, 2008
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Caffeine is the drug many of us can't live without – but do you have any idea how much is in your daily hit?
Propped up on my desk before me, there is a vacuum-sealed bag of white powder. Chemists would recognise this substance as a methylated xanthine, composed of tiny crystalline structures. It is a drug, and I have been under its influence nearly every day for the past 25 years. It is caffeine, and in moderation it makes us feel good. But it is a drug whose strength is consistently underestimated. You'd need to down about 50 cups of coffee at once, or 200 cups of tea, to approach a lethal level of caffeination – but if you go straight for the powder, you can get a lot very quickly.
On 9 April 2010, 23-year-old Michael Bedford was at a party near his home in Mansfield. He ate two spoonfuls of caffeine powder he'd bought online, and washed them down with an energy drink. He began slurring his words, then vomited, collapsed and died. It's likely he ingested more than 5g of caffeine. The coroner cited caffeine's "cardiotoxic effects" as the cause of death.
How much caffeine is the average person taking on daily? When someone asks about our caffeine habits, we tend to reply in terms of how many cups of coffee we drink. But this is a wildly inadequate measure. One 40ml cup of coffee – the size often used in studies of caffeine consumption – could have less than 60mg of caffeine, while one 450ml cup could have nearly 10 times as much, but both could be considered one cup of coffee.
In an effort to make this easier, I came up with a measure called a Standard Caffeine Dose, or Scad. A Scad is 75mg. This is roughly equal to a shot of espresso, 150ml of coffee, a 250ml can of Red Bull, two 350ml cans of Coke or Pepsi, or a pint of Diet Coke. I take about four or five Scads daily. On a two-Scad day, I will feel slow; on a seven-Scad day, jittery.
Anyone will tell you that the British have remained allied with tea, not coffee, but that is only partly true. While the British still drink more tea, by volume, than coffee, they now get more of their caffeine from coffee than from tea. Surprisingly, colas and energy drinks now contribute nearly as much caffeine to the British diet as tea: 34mg daily versus 36mg daily.
It is not easy to know how much caffeine is in your daily cup of coffee. Forensic toxicologist Bruce Goldberger used to work in Baltimore, identifying lethal drugs in the blood of overdose victims. But he turned his mind to a question with broader appeal: how much caffeine are we getting in our beverages? He and his colleagues analysed the contents of coffee drinks, publishing the results in 2003. They found huge caffeine differences not only between coffee brands but also between coffees from the same shop. He bought a 480ml cup of coffee from one branch of Starbucks on six consecutive days. Each time, he ordered the Breakfast Blend. The cup with the least caffeine had 260mg. One had twice that amount. Yet another clocked in at a whopping 564mg.
For a study published in 2012, Scottish researcher Thomas Crozier and his colleagues bought 20 espressos in Glasgow cafes. They found that the caffeine concentration varied from 56mg to 196mg per 28ml, with four cafes serving up espressos containing more than 200mg of caffeine.
cont at
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...iction-coffee-drug-energy-drink?commentpage=1
Propped up on my desk before me, there is a vacuum-sealed bag of white powder. Chemists would recognise this substance as a methylated xanthine, composed of tiny crystalline structures. It is a drug, and I have been under its influence nearly every day for the past 25 years. It is caffeine, and in moderation it makes us feel good. But it is a drug whose strength is consistently underestimated. You'd need to down about 50 cups of coffee at once, or 200 cups of tea, to approach a lethal level of caffeination – but if you go straight for the powder, you can get a lot very quickly.
On 9 April 2010, 23-year-old Michael Bedford was at a party near his home in Mansfield. He ate two spoonfuls of caffeine powder he'd bought online, and washed them down with an energy drink. He began slurring his words, then vomited, collapsed and died. It's likely he ingested more than 5g of caffeine. The coroner cited caffeine's "cardiotoxic effects" as the cause of death.
How much caffeine is the average person taking on daily? When someone asks about our caffeine habits, we tend to reply in terms of how many cups of coffee we drink. But this is a wildly inadequate measure. One 40ml cup of coffee – the size often used in studies of caffeine consumption – could have less than 60mg of caffeine, while one 450ml cup could have nearly 10 times as much, but both could be considered one cup of coffee.
In an effort to make this easier, I came up with a measure called a Standard Caffeine Dose, or Scad. A Scad is 75mg. This is roughly equal to a shot of espresso, 150ml of coffee, a 250ml can of Red Bull, two 350ml cans of Coke or Pepsi, or a pint of Diet Coke. I take about four or five Scads daily. On a two-Scad day, I will feel slow; on a seven-Scad day, jittery.
Anyone will tell you that the British have remained allied with tea, not coffee, but that is only partly true. While the British still drink more tea, by volume, than coffee, they now get more of their caffeine from coffee than from tea. Surprisingly, colas and energy drinks now contribute nearly as much caffeine to the British diet as tea: 34mg daily versus 36mg daily.
It is not easy to know how much caffeine is in your daily cup of coffee. Forensic toxicologist Bruce Goldberger used to work in Baltimore, identifying lethal drugs in the blood of overdose victims. But he turned his mind to a question with broader appeal: how much caffeine are we getting in our beverages? He and his colleagues analysed the contents of coffee drinks, publishing the results in 2003. They found huge caffeine differences not only between coffee brands but also between coffees from the same shop. He bought a 480ml cup of coffee from one branch of Starbucks on six consecutive days. Each time, he ordered the Breakfast Blend. The cup with the least caffeine had 260mg. One had twice that amount. Yet another clocked in at a whopping 564mg.
For a study published in 2012, Scottish researcher Thomas Crozier and his colleagues bought 20 espressos in Glasgow cafes. They found that the caffeine concentration varied from 56mg to 196mg per 28ml, with four cafes serving up espressos containing more than 200mg of caffeine.
cont at
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...iction-coffee-drug-energy-drink?commentpage=1
