Wake Up and Smell the... Tea

There’s a crisis brewing (or should that be percolating) in coffee land, and it’s nothing to do with those fancy packets of Fair Trade coffee that the trendy set buy. You know, those little green packets that sell at a massive mark up in supermarkets where the Ethiopian coffee grower gets given a goat, the middle man gets a new holiday home in Hawaii and the supermarket makes an extra few million in profits.

Nope, it’s far worse than that – and Starbucks and Costa Coffee will surely be quaking in their chocolate muffin filled boots.

Scientists (yeap, it’s those friendly egg-heads again) at Bristol University are suggesting that the benefits of caffeine could have been exaggerated and that the caffeine found in tea and coffee may not actually boost your early morning alertness or even stave off that bought of sleepiness. Hmmm. Me thinks that there was a jar of coffee, a stop watch and a number of giggling students on a dare going on here.

Anyway, our boffins think that, just like cigarettes, people become dependant on the caffeine which, without an overnight dose of caffeine, results in mild withdrawal symptoms. The effect of that first cup of coffee is actually your body’s cravings being satisfied and if you’ve not drunk coffee for a few days (such as over the weekend) you do actually get a bit of a buzz from it.

And it gets worse too, as people suffering from high blood pressure (so that would be most of us then) should steer well clear of the tea and coffee. But as with all health revelations these days there’s always an opposite argument because tea and coffee also contain a wealth of health-boosting compounds and antioxidants. Still, you’re allowed the decaffeinated variants – but they just don’t feel or taste the same.

So, you’d better make mine a large cappuccino then.