Coffee, Tea...

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Peter Bryenton asked "I was wondering how much caffeine there is on average in an ordinary cup of instant coffee?"

Not an easy question as the consumer is in control of how strong they make the coffee and how big a cup they use.  Generally instant coffee powder is about 2-3% caffeine and instant coffee is about 330mg/L (about 75mg per cup).  But I know my first cup of coffee in the morning is considerably stronger than my last of the day.

Tea is generally only about 80% of the caffeine levels of coffee but, again, this varies with type, cup size and steeping time.  Herbal teas generally have none but be careful of flavoured green teas, they have similar levels to black tea.

Colas are about 100mg/L; a third that of tea and coffee.

The much vaunted 'Energy Drinks' are only permitted a maximum of 320 mg/L in Australia and so are on a par with tea and coffee.  Not that they would want an image of a little old lady sipping her cuppa to be equated to the macho image of the heroic energy drink urban warrior-rapper-sportsman.
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I'll drink to that!

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You are not going to want to read this: chocolate cannot be relied upon as a source of antioxidants to boost cardiovascular health. But it gets worse: drinking coffee and red wine in the hope it will prevent heart disease doesn't work either.

- The Age Newspaper.

Why am I not surprised?

Have I not said from day one (of this blog) that there are no silver bullets?

Note: I do have to be careful - the reports in the media are exactly what I expected to be the case so the temptation to be uncritical is high.

But really why should anything be a silver bullet? We, as animals, have evolved along with the plants. Some we have leant to eat safely. Some we have learnt will kill us and should be avoided. True, there may be some plants which have beneficial properties but it is pure fluke and certainly there is no reason to think that, if a little is beneficial, a lot will be more so.

Even red wine.
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