No Coffee, No Problem

            

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                 For over five years now I have been an active coffee consumer. The delicious brew, hot or iced, blended, with whipped cream options, and that zest it brings when I drink it are why many people may choose to drink coffee every morning. Not once during all my years drinking coffee did I ever think something so delicious could bring me any harm. My addiction goes back to my experience with coffee in high school. Senior year, as I mentioned last week, was absolutely ridiculous. The homework load, constant exams, and having to fill out college applications was just alarming. Apart from never having time to eat breakfast, I went to bed after midnight and always woke up at around 6:30am to prepare everything I would need at school, given the fact that I wouldn’t come back home until around 6:00pm. So my question was, how do I survive this madness? My solution was drinking a venti-sized coffee from my favorite vendor Starbucks. In the fall I would get a hot caramel macchiato, to stay warm. During the winter I’d spice it up with various holiday drinks like Pumpkin Spice Latte or Peppermint Mocha. Then once the weather warmed up I would go back to my caramel macchiatos but now they were iced. Drinking my favorite drinks was like being able to call my friend after an exhausting and miserable day at school. Towards the end of freshman year and all through sophomore and junior years my coffee dependency increased immensely. I was not caring about my bedtime because I knew my friend coffee would always have my back no matter what.

http://www.kitchendaily.com/read/starbucks-reveals-new-drink-holiday-season

The unexplainable bond coffee and I had is similar to the way many other people feel about the drink. In Ronald J. Troyer’s piece, “Coffee Drinking: An Emerging Social Problem,” he suggests that coffee is known as a stimulation for “social gatherings” varying from “morning newspaper, over which most people drink their first cup of coffee” to popular “coffee breaks” in the workplace (Troyer 403). So my question is, how can something that brings people together possibly harm me in any way?

            Then I read Ai Kubo Shlonsky’s article, “Traits of Persons Who Drink Decaffeinated Coffee,” and found out that the replacement of caffeinated coffee with decaffeinated was not a personal choice for many individuals. Before getting into his argument of the harmfulness of coffee, he did mention that, “Approximately 80% of Americans consume coffee, and among coffee drinkers the average US consumption is 3.1 cups of coffee per day” (Shlonsky 273). With Shlonsky’s and Troyer’s articles emphasizing coffee’s popularity, I knew I wouldn’t feel as bad reading the harm that can come with drinking too much of my go to drink.

            First I stop to think again, could coffee really harm me, or does it only cause harm to certain individuals? Variations in the consumption of it can cause multiple levels of health problems and overall has different effects on individuals. Schlonsky states that “the relation of cardiovascular history to decaffeinated coffee use leads us to briefly review the unresolved issue of an association between coronary heart disease and total coffee consumption” (Schlonsky 278). He explains that although caffeine is not the only thing responsible for the disease, that there is a higher “total blood cholesterol levels” in heavier coffee drinkers” and does in fact “contribute to higher coronary disease risk” (Schlonsky 278). Therefore not only does the overconsumption of coffee add to our dependency of caffeine, but its ingredients put consumers at risk of developing a disease. Caffeine in general shouldn’t be something we drink excess amounts of. 

            I asked myself one more time, could drinking coffee really harm me? Knowing that the answer to this question could be yes completely terrifies me. Something I was so dependent upon had betrayed me, and I couldn’t really turn to it on a daily basis.

            The problem is that my reasoning in high school is very similar to what I’ve been doing since I got to college. This constant dependency on caffeine isn’t healthy for me. Looking back to senior year I remember my mother saying she had had enough of my coffee obsession. She immediately cut it out of my diet. I’ll be honest; I didn’t comply with her new rules for a week. But after that I came to understand the importance of honoring something my mother felt so strongly about. She saw how tired I was, how agitated I’d get all the time, and then the crash that’d come with drinking caffeine on my way home from school. I saw the way my body began responding to this ongoing cycle, so I, myself had to help put a stop to this. I began ordering a venti iced green tea, lightly sweetened from Starbucks and I just liked the way I felt. It was refreshing and I didn’t feel as anxious as I did with coffee.

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            I have now made it my goal to bring my high school habit to college and for three days observe how my behavior differs with replacing my daily dose of coffee with something more natural like green tea. I needed a new way to vamp up my mornings and why not do so with something as Kevin Cirilli’s article, “The Face-Off: Coffee Vs. Tea,” from Men’s Health magazine suggests, “can aid in repairing a weak immune system…that prevents viruses from reactivating.”

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Monday February 2^nd:

I started off my morning with boiling water with my Mr. Coffee, machine. I had previously purchased Bigelow’s certified organic green tea from Safeway when I had gotten all my breakfast supplies last week. I made the tea with two tea bags, hot water, and some organic honey. The taste of tea isn’t obviously as great as a fancy delicious coffee drink from Starbucks, but if I made it work in high school, I could make it work in college. Throughout my entire Monday morning I noticed I was a lot calmer than my usual mornings. I had both a croissant and tea for breakfast because I wanted to make sure I continued to practice having breakfast as well. I wasn’t as tired as usual but I can say that I didn’t immediately wake up when I drank the tea like I do when I have coffee.

Tuesday February 3^rd: 

On Tuesday I tried making my own tea in my dorm room following the same procedures from the day before. But this time I was able to sleep in more because my class didn’t begin until 10:20am so lets just say I was in a better mood about having to make my own tea. The taste of tea itself wasn’t as pleasant as coffee. It was bitter, not as satisfying to start drinking the way that coffee presents itself to be. But what I really enjoyed about drinking green tea is that I genuinely felt better throughout the rest of my day, even though at first I initially tend to feel more tired than when I usually have coffee. I would highly recommend not really following the quote about not judging a book by its cover. Being more awake this day than the last I noticed that tea doesn’t have that great of a smell, which can make it harder to drink. But I was able to go through both of my classes drinking my tea and feeling more at ease with my busy schedule.

Wednesday February 4^th:

I really screwed up my whole process when I went to bed around 2:00am and woke up at 9:00am for my Wednesday class. Waking up to an annoying xylophone sounding alarm, my morning was already off to a bad start. Unfortunately, I turned to Tapingo. I ordered a grande chai tea iced and it was absolutely delicious. I am not sure if it was because someone else made it for me and I just had to pick it up. But I enjoyed it way more than I enjoyed the teas I had made myself the previous days. Although I was tired again in the morning, when I drank the tea I never really crash. I don’t go through an acceleration stage, mellowing out, and then crashing stage throughout my day. Tea evens out the emotions and just calmly accommodates me throughout my day.

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            Coffee is an aggressive friend that I can depend on to get me going in the morning, wake me up, but leave my system when her job is done. Tea is not so aggressive and makes time to hang out with me all day but not force me to wake up immediately. I’ve noticed that tea for some reason calms me down and why not turn to tea when I know she helps prevent me from getting sick and keeps me in a good mood. My days experimenting with tea were honestly really nice. Not only did I save five to six dollars a day that I would spend on my morning coffee, I even learned the value of making an effort to get more sleep and allowing more natural drinks to enter my body. I hope you can all learn a little something about limiting your consumption of coffee or maybe just getting some green tea here I know it has definitely helped me and hopefully brings you the same wholesome results. Stop by next week to learn about the importance of daily fruit servings and making the best choices to keep yourself as healthy as you can.

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Works Cited

Cirilli, Kevin. "The Face-Off: Coffee Vs. Tea."menshealthmag. Rodale Inc, 06 Apr.

2012. Web. 04 Feb. 2015. <http://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/the-showdown-

coffee-vs-tea>.

Shlonsky, Ai Kubo, Arthur L. Klatsky, and Mary Anne Armstrong. "Traits of persons

who drink decaffeinated coffee." Annals of Epidemiology 13.4 (2003): 273-279.

Troyer, Ronald J., and Gerald E. Markle. "Coffee drinking: an emerging social problem?”

Social Problems 31.4 (1984): 403-416.