Some people like the bitter taste of coffee; others enjoy the ritual of making it or they like its soothing warmth. But whatever reason people give you, the primary attraction of coffee and tea is caffeine---the most widely used stimulant in our culture and the only psychoactive drug in our food supply. Maybe you've never made a habit of drinking coffee and tea. Good for you! But the fast caffeine is listed as an ingredient in an array of everyday foods and drugs; soft drinks, chocolate and soft candies, baked goods, gelatin and puddings, frozen dairy products, headache remedies, painkillers, allergy and sinus medications, weight-control pills, and more than 1,000 over the counter and prescription drugs.

      Even if you've consciously tried to avoid caffeine, you probably can't honestly say you've never had caffeine products or never will.

Learn the Risks

      What's a conscientious person to do? Maybe the best thing is to learn what caffeine does and how to reduce the risks of using it. Many people consume an astonishing amount of caffeine, most of it is coffee. Because of increased health consciousness, consumption of coffee is going down. But softdrink consumption has more than doubled and two-thirds of cola and fruit-flavored sodas in the market have added caffeine.

      None of these matter unless caffeine is bad for you. As a public health problem, caffeine use is certainly not on a far with alcohol use and smoking. But it's hazard to generalized about it. We know it has specific short-term effects, not all of which are bad, and long term effects, about which we have little conclusive data. Caffeine is like a man who keeps getting arrested for a variety of crimes and misdemeanors but always gets off for each of evidence. He may not be dangerous, but you probably wouldn't invite him home for dinner.

      Why does such confusion exist about the long-term effects of caffeine? Or about what quantity of caffeine does what, or how much caffeine is in what? One reason is the many variables. For example, the amount of caffeine in a cup of coffee depends on the size of the cup, the kind of coffee, and the way it is made. Generally, drip coffee has more than instant, which has more than decaffeinated and so on. Tea leaves have more caffeine per weight than coffee beans. But a cup of tea has about half the caffeine of a regular cup of coffee because the ratio of water to tea leaves is greater than the ratio of water to coffee ground. Furthermore, coffee is recently brewed longer than tea, and the longer the infusion, the more caffeine.