Caffeine in your Decaf Coffee
Do you use caffeine to treat your attention deficit disorder? Or do you avoid caffeine at night to protect your mission-critical sleep? In either case, you probably ought know how much you’re taking and when. Problem is, if you’re drinking decaf coffee, you can’t always be sure.
Excerpt from A Wake-Up Call for Coffee Drinkers, New York Times, October 25, 2007:
Coffee sleuths from Consumer Reports recently tested cups of decaf ordered at Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, Seattle’s Best Coffee, 7-Eleven, McDonald’s and Burger King. They visited six locations of each chain, evaluating 36 cups of decaf in all.
A regular cup of coffee has from 85 to 100 milligrams of caffeine. Most of the 10- to 12-ounce decafs tested had less than five milligrams, the magazine reports in its November issue. But one decaf from Dunkin’ Donuts contained 32 milligrams of caffeine — about the same amount in 12 ounces of Coca-Cola Classic. A cup of Seattle’s Best was found to contain 29 milligrams of caffeine, while a tall Starbucks decaf packed 21 milligrams. Results varied at each chain, but the magazine found that the decaf at McDonald’s consistently had the lowest levels of caffeine.
Coffee beans image courtesy of iband clip art for all.
July 16th, 2008 08:22
For fear of having the ‘coffee brigade’ after me I can’t help but put my two-penneth in about coffee, and caffeine in general. DON’T DO IT. As an Holistic Consultant I have seen so many people come to me with an array of tiredness symptoms and although they would pay me for treatment they were very reluctant to give up the tea, coffee, fizzy drinks etc. These are addictive substances and I have successfully treated people with such problems. I give a taster of this on my website in the form of boosting your energy, but back on to caffeine :
DON’T drink tea, coffee or sugary drinks to boost your energy as they will give you an artificial ‘high’ – only to have you crashing down in a tired and depressed slump a short time later. Drink water instead, 70% of your body and 80% of your brain is made up of water, and it is exactly the sort of fuel it needs to get you through the rest of the day.
As I am interested in both tiredness symptoms and addictions to everyday food and drink so I posted this on Squidoo recently, which you may find helpful. It includes a short video as well as a short amount of text.
One final thing, I have only just stumbled across this site for executives with ADD. Celebrate your ADD rather than see it as a negative thing. You undoubtedly have skills that others will never possess. I live in an Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) family so we live it every day!