It's been many years since I was introduced to tea, and only a few since I was introduced to coffee. Throughout all this time, I was always informed that coffee was "bad for [my] health", and that I shouldn't drink it. I was also told that it was addicting, and that if I valued my soul, I should stay away from it. Besides - tea has magical herbal healing powers that are good for my body AND my soul.
Or so I always thought.
As I got older, I was told that caffeine was the root of all evil, and that it was found in great abundance in coffee. Tea was still okay.
Then, someone came to me and said that they drank green tea, it fixed them right up, and they didn't get sick.
I was skeptical about the entire thing, because I had since learned that green tea is heavy in caffeine, and it can actually make it worse, since caffeine makes your blood vessels smaller.
Now, all this may seem like nothing, but when I went to Encarta to get to the bottom of it all, this is what I found out:
"The concentration of caffeine in tea ranges from 2.5 to 4.5 percent, as contrasted to an average concentration of about 1.5 percent in coffee." (Microsoft Encarta, 2000 Delux Edition)
AHA!
Tea isn't better for you, it's worse! Don't get me wrong, I love tea...but that's a whole lot of caffeine being pumped into the system. If you want a quick pick-me-up, don't go for the bottled coffee and sugar (otherwise known as a Starbucks Frappuccino), go for the tea. (Besides - it'll be less calories.)
I would just have to caution, though, that if people can't wake up without their coffee...imagine what life would be like without their tea. And with that much caffeine consistently being pumped into the blood stream - they could easily go on the fritz at any second.
So there you have it. Coffee has less caffeine than tea, and less sugar than certain commercially bottled beverages.
interesting! I never would have thought that tea was so high in caffeine. thanks for the info.
~Megan
I found it pretty amazing, too.
Sadly, I'm one of the many. I've gone for about 35 hours without caffiene only to wake up with an unbearable headache that literally made me sick.
Point being: I love coffee. Props.
-Lauren-
Oh my gosh. I can't even imagine going cold turkey like that after being on it for a long time. That just sounds insanely painful. I've sort of gone cold turkey with caffeine in the past, but it was never really bad, because my caffeine tolerance was low. So it wasn't like I was missing it too much. How did you deal with it? (And thank you!)
I had heard something similar, so I looked this up:
"While coffee and tea are both sources of caffeine, the amounts of caffeine in any single serving of these beverages varies significantly. An average serving of coffee contains the most caffeine, yet the same serving size of tea provides only 1/2 to 1/3 as much.(Ref.: Caffeine by The Institute of Food Technologists' Expert Panel on Food Safety & Nutrition.) -- One of the more confusing aspects of caffeine content is the fact that coffee contains less caffeine than tea when measured in its dry form. -- The caffeine content of a prepared cup of coffee is significantly higher than the caffeine content of a prepared cup of tea. "
For more information:
http://www.stashtea.com/caffeine.htm
I would definitely have to say that that is making absolutely no sense in my mind.
Like, how can you get more caffeine in the same serving size of dried stuff after preparing it?
My guess is that the caffine gets into the water better through coffee than through tea. So if you chew your teabags, then the blog still applies.
That's an interesting mental image