The end of cheap food
FOR as long as most people can remember, food has been getting cheaper and farming has been in decline. In 1974-2005 food prices on world markets fell by three-quarters in real terms. Food today is so cheap that the West is battling gluttony even as it scrapes piles of half-eaten leftovers into the bin.
That is why this year’s price rise has been so extraordinary. Since the spring, wheat prices have doubled and almost every crop under the sun—maize, milk, oilseeds, you name it—is at or near a peak in nominal terms. The Economist’s food-price index is higher today than at any time since it was created in 1845 (see chart). Even in real terms, prices have jumped by 75% since 2005. No doubt farmers will meet higher prices with investment and more production, but dearer food is likely to persist for years (see article). That is because “agflation” is underpinned by long-running changes in diet that accompany the growing wealth of emerging economies—the Chinese consumer who ate 20kg (44lb) of meat in 1985 will scoff over 50kg of the stuff this year. That in turn pushes up demand for grain: it takes 8kg of grain to produce one of beef.
But the rise in prices is also the self-inflicted result of America’s reckless ethanol subsidies. This year biofuels will take a third of America’s (record) maize harvest. That affects food markets directly: fill up an SUV’s fuel tank with ethanol and you have used enough maize to feed a person for a year. And it affects them indirectly, as farmers switch to maize from other crops. The 30m tonnes of extra maize going to ethanol this year amounts to half the fall in the world’s overall grain stocks.
Dearer food has the capacity to do enormous good and enormous harm. It will hurt urban consumers, especially in poor countries, by increasing the price of what is already the most expensive item in their household budgets. It will benefit farmers and agricultural communities by increasing the rewards of their labour; in many poor rural places it will boost the most important source of jobs and economic growth.
Although the cost of food is determined by fundamental patterns of demand and supply, the balance between good and ill also depends in part on governments. If politicians do nothing, or the wrong things, the world faces more misery, especially among the urban poor. If they get policy right, they can help increase the wealth of the poorest nations, aid the rural poor, rescue farming from subsidies and neglect—and minimise the harm to the slum-dwellers and landless labourers. So far, the auguries look gloomy.
In the trough
That, at least, is the lesson of half a century of food policy. Whatever the supposed threat—the lack of food security, rural poverty, environmental stewardship—the world seems to have only one solution: government intervention. Most of the subsidies and trade barriers have come at a huge cost. The trillions of dollars spent supporting farmers in rich countries have led to higher taxes, worse food, intensively farmed monocultures, overproduction and world prices that wreck the lives of poor farmers in the emerging markets. And for what? Despite the help, plenty of Western farmers have been beset by poverty. Increasing productivity means you need fewer farmers, which steadily drives the least efficient off the land. Even a vast subsidy cannot reverse that.
With agflation, policy has reached a new level of self-parody. Take America’s supposedly verdant ethanol subsidies. It is not just that they are supporting a relatively dirty version of ethanol (far better to import Brazil’s sugar-based liquor); they are also offsetting older grain subsidies that lowered prices by encouraging overproduction. Intervention multiplies like lies. Now countries such as Russia and Venezuela have imposed price controls—an aid to consumers—to offset America’s aid to ethanol producers. Meanwhile, high grain prices are persuading people to clear forests to plant more maize.
Dearer food is a chance to break this dizzying cycle. Higher market prices make it possible to reduce subsidies without hurting incomes. A farm bill is now going through America’s Congress. The European Union has promised a root-and-branch review (not yet reform) of its farm-support scheme. The reforms of the past few decades have, in fact, grappled with the rich world’s farm programmes—but only timidly. Now comes the chance for politicians to show that they are serious when they say they want to put agriculture right.
Cutting rich-world subsidies and trade barriers would help taxpayers; it could revive the stalled Doha round of world trade talks, boosting the world economy; and, most important, it would directly help many of the world’s poor. In terms of economic policy, it is hard to think of a greater good.
Where government help is really needed
Three-quarters of the world’s poor live in rural areas. The depressed world prices created by farm policies over the past few decades have had a devastating effect. There has been a long-term fall in investment in farming and the things that sustain it, such as irrigation. The share of public spending going to agriculture in developing countries has fallen by half since 1980. Poor countries that used to export food now import it.
Reducing subsidies in the West would help reverse this. The World Bank reckons that if you free up agricultural trade, the prices of things poor countries specialise in (like cotton) would rise and developing countries would capture the gains by increasing exports. And because farming accounts for two-thirds of jobs in the poorest countries, it is the most important contributor to the early stages of economic growth. According to the World Bank, the really poor get three times as much extra income from an increase in farm productivity as from the same gain in industry or services. In the long term, thriving farms and open markets provide a secure food supply.
However, there is an obvious catch—and one that justifies government help. High prices have a mixed impact on poverty: they hurt anyone who loses more from dear food than he gains from a higher income. And that means over a billion urban consumers (and some landless labourers), many of whom are politically influential in poor countries. Given the speed of this year’s food-price rises, governments in emerging markets have no alternative but to try to soften the blow.
Where they can, these governments should subsidise the incomes of the poor, rather than food itself, because that minimises price distortions. Where food subsidies are unavoidable, they should be temporary and targeted on the poor. So far, most government interventions in the poor world have failed these tests: politicians who seem to think cheap food part of the natural order of things have slapped on price controls and export restraints, which hurt farmers and will almost certainly fail.
Over the past few years, a sense has grown that the rich are hogging the world’s wealth. In poor countries, widening income inequality takes the form of a gap between city and country: incomes have been rising faster for urban dwellers than for rural ones. If handled properly, dearer food is a once-in-a-generation chance to narrow income disparities and to wean rich farmers from subsidies and help poor ones. The ultimate reward, though, is not merely theirs: it is to make the world richer and fairer.
by economist
Everything About Tea
Camellia sinensis is an evergreen plant and grows in tropical to sub-tropical climates. In addition to tropical climates (at least 50 inches of rainfall a year), it also prefers acidic soils. Many high quality tea plants grow at elevations up to 1500 meters (5,000 feet), as the plants grow more slowly and acquire a better flavor. Only the top 1-2 inches of the mature plant are picked. These buds and leaves are called flushes, and a plant will grow a new flush every seven to ten days during the growing season.
Tea plants will grow into a tree if left undisturbed, but cultivated plants are pruned to waist height for ease of plucking.
Two principal varieties are used, the small-leaved China plant (C. sinensis sinensis) and the large-leaved Assam plant (C. sinensis assamica).
History of Tea
Tea is so much a part of everyday life in Britain that we might never stop to think about how a unique plant from faraway China became the nation?s favourite drink. But the history of tea is fascinating, and in this section we can follow its story from the earliest times in Imperial China right up to its present place at the heart of British life.
Read about the exotic beginnings of tea ” the legends surrounding its origins as a drink, its popularity among the Chinese emperors, and the cultural significance of the Japanese tea ceremony. Discover how tea was brought to England by a seventeenth century queen, and how important the tea trade was to the British East India Company, one of the most powerful commercial organisations the world has ever seen. Learn how the phenomenal popularity of tea in the eighteenth century led to widespread smuggling and adulteration, and about the murderous lengths smugglers went to to protect their illegal trade. Read also about the Boston Tea Party of 1773, which sparked off the American Revolution, and how rivalry between the English and the American tea traders in the nineteenth century led to the excitement of the Clipper races. And trace the social history of tea in Britain, from the early debates about its health-giving properties, to the rise of the tea bag, via the great tradition of the London Tea Auction and the role of tea in boosting morale in the World Wars.
Tea Facts
- Drink your way to the top…
- 80% of office workers now claim they find out more about what’s going on at work over a cup of tea than in any other way.
Big in India…
- Apart from tourism, tea is the biggest industrial activity in India.
A long time ago…
- Tea was created more than 5000 years ago in China.
The first book…
- The first book about tea was written by Lu Yu in 800 A.D
Arrived in Europe…
- Tea firstly appeared in Europe thanks to Portuguese Jesuit Father Jasper de Cruz in 1560.
How many cups a day…
- The number of recommended cups of tea to drink each day is 4, this gives you optimal benefit.
Bag it up…
- 96% of all cups of tea drunk daily in the UK are brewed from tea bags.
As you like it…
- 98% of people take their tea with milk, but only 30% take sugar in tea.
A cup of tea to keep the dentist away…
- Tea is a natural source of fluoride that can help protect against tooth decay and gum disease
And the doctor away…
- Tea has potential health maintainence benefits in cardiovascular disease and cancer prevention.
Good for you…
- Tea contains half the amount of caffeine found in coffee.
Everyone’s favourite…
- By the middle of the 18th Century tea had replaced ale and gin as the drink of the masses and had become Britain’s most popular beverage.
Tea break time…
- Tea breaks are a tradition that have been with us for approximately 200 years.
Everything brewed from the leaf of the tea plant is tea.
Everything else is something else!
We will use here the term tea for the “real” tea, otherwise mention the origin (herbal, fruit, Mate etc.)
All tea comes from the same plant. It was thought at one time that green and black teas were made from different plants. In fact it is only the different plucking and processing methods that produce the different types - green, black, oolong, white, yellow, Pu-erh or scented.
Many different varieties within each category result in hundreds of teas from all over the world.
The leaves are plucked as the new shoots or “flush” are beginning to grow (two leaves one bud). These tiny young shoots and their thin, unopened buds produce the most delicate and flavourful teas. Picked and processed by hand only these delicate young leaves go into the making of a premium tea.
Black tea is the most common tea in Europe. Although the first tea that came to Europe was green, black tea seems to be more suited for our taste and has displaced green tea almost completely.
The picked leaf undergoes a full fermentation process composed of six basic steps - withering, rolling, sorting, fermenting, firing (or drying) and grading.
1. Withering
The leaves are exposed to hot air for several hours in order to reduce their water content by 50% to 60%. This step starts to free up the enzyme responsible for oxidizing the leaf (fermentation). It also softens the leaves, preparing them to undergo subsequent operations without breaking. The leaves must not be broken or bruised (except for oolong).
2. Rolling - The leaves are rolled (by hand or mechanically) allowing the essential oils to spread and to impregnate the buds. The aroma of the tea depends on these essential oils.
3. Sorting - A calibrated screen is used to sort the tea. The smallest leaves go directly to the next stage, while the larger, tougher ones undergo a second rolling.
4. Fermentation - This entails the chemical reaction of the leaves and their components (polyphenols) with air, humidity and heat. This is a crucial moment, one in which the aroma, bite and colour of the tea (turns coppery red) are determined. If this step is stopped too soon the tea is greenish and can have a metallic after-taste; if it is fermented too much it becomes sweetish and loses both quality and aroma.
5. Firing - The characteristics of the tea become fixed at this stage (colour of the leave turns black). Drying the leaves in the oven stops the fermentation process. If the leaves are not dried enough (if more than 12% humidity remains), the tea may be attacked by mould. If they are dried too much (if less than 2% to 3% humidity remain) the result is a tea without aroma since the aroma-carrying elements remain largely insoluble.
6. Grading - The leaves are separated by size or grade. This operation also cools and aerates the leaves.
Once this process is complete 100 kg of fresh leaves will have yielded 20 -25kg of black tea.
Soluble tea is a black tea that has undergone the usual production steps but that is dried even further and reduced to powder. This type of tea has the advantage of being easier to crate and ship for export. It is also ideal for the two tea innovations of the 20th century: iced tea and the tea bag.
Green tea is often referred to as “unfermented” tea.
- Firing - The leaves are placed for 20 to 30 seconds in large iron basins heated to about 100° Celsius. This operation destroys the enzyme that causes fermentation. The leaves then remain green. In Japan this process is accomplished by exposing the leaves to steam.
- Rolling - As for black tea the smaller and more tightly rolled the leaf the more robust the tea as more components are released.
- Drying - This allows some evaporation of the water contained in the leaves to prevent mould.
- Sorting - This is the step where the grades are separated out. Just as for black tea the process uses sieves or screens of different calibers (see our range here) .
Oolong means “black dragon” and is generally referred to as “semi-fermented” tea.
It is produced only in China and Taiwan in similar way as black tea (withering, rolling, fermentation, firing). The difference is that the leaves are wilted in direct sunlight and then shaken in bamboo baskets to lightly bruise the edges.
In the next step only the bruised edges are fermented the core of the leaf is still green hence half fermented.
Oolongs are always whole leaf teas, never broken by rolling.
They have a distinctive peachy flavour (Wu Yi Yan Cha Oolong).
White tea is produced on a very limited scale in China and Sri Lanka.
The new buds are plucked before they open and allowed to dry. The curled-up buds have a silvery appearance and produce a very pale, straw-coloured tea with a fine, aromatic and mild character (unfermented).
This used to be the tea for the Chinese Emperor. It is said that only white dressed virgins were allowed the pluck the buds with their mouth in the early morning to keep the tea as pure as possible (White Bud).
Yellow tea is only produced in China, often made from the leaves of wild growing tea bushes.
In the past monkeys were trained to pluck the leaves because they often grow in inaccessible terrain.
It is best placed between green and Oolong tea.
The making of yellow tea is similar to green tea (unfermented). After firing and rolling the leaves are stored in small piles in a room with a constant humidity for about two hours. During this procedure the leaves get their yellow colour.
The range of sorts is very limited and there are only small quantities available.
The aroma of Yellow tea is famous, with hints of chocolate and coffee (Huan Chan Mao Feng).
Pu-erh tea is originally from South-China (Yunnan). The production is different to this of black or green tea.
- A basic tea is produced (Qing Mao). The freshly plucked leaves are wilted, then slightly roasted, rolled, shaped (to bring it into leaf form again), dried, rolled, shaped and dried again.
It is fermented with water (which includes certain necessary bacteria) over a period of 40-50 days.
- The little piles of tea have to be turned and watered regulary and the right mix of temperature (under 60°C) and humidity is crucial.
- The fermentation is stopped by treating the tea with hot air (150°C) which also kills the bacteria.
Pu-erh is often sold in different forms (nests, squares, biscuit). Due to its unique manufacturing process Pu-erh tea posses a distinctive earthy flavour (Pu-Erh lemon).
Scented tea is created when the additional flavourings are mixed with the leaf at a final stage before the tea is packed. For Jasmine tea (the oldest existing scented tea, invented in China), whole jasmine blossoms are added to green, black or oolong tea. Fruit-flavoured teas are generally made by blending the fruits’ essential oils with tea (for example Earl Grey is black or green tea mixed with the oil of the Bergamot).
Apart from the classical teas the brewing of parts of a plant was and is practised all over the world. Here are some “non classical” teas:
Mate tea comes from South America. It was found in ancient Indian graves and has a long tradition there.
The leaves are plucked from the mate bush (Ilex paraguayensis St.- Hil.) and briefly heated for dehydration.
Afterwards the leaves are fermented for about 30- 45 days and finally dried.
The result is green mate with a slightly sweet-sour, smokey taste. A certain percentage is being roasted to a stronger, smokier taste (roasted mate).
Mate tea is very popular in Argentina, Brasil and Paraguay.
It contains 0.5-3% caffeine which has a coffee like effect due to the absence of tannic acid (unlike green and black tea).
In South America a little pumkin is filled half with mate leaves and then filled up with boiling water. The quite strong brew is sucked in through a tube. In Europe mate is brewed like other tea (max. 5min brewing time).
Rooibush tea is made from the leaf and bark of a South African bush (Aspalathus linearis, in Afrikaans: Rooibos).
The name “red bush” comes from the fact that the plant turns fire red in the seventh year and dies. It was discovered in the 19th century north of Capetown.
Rooibush is choped, fermented for 8-24 hours (turns into red-brown colour) and then dried.
The taste is fresh-fruity and there is no acid or caffein in Roibush tea. It’s alkaline nature and high percentage of vitamin C and vital minerals makes this tea an ideal drink for children, expectant women and it is perfect to drink at nighttime.
Most Roibush comes as scented tea (Roibush Applestrudel).
The brewing time is 5-10 minutes and it is made like normal tea.
Lapacho tea also comes from Sout America.
Lapacho is a tree (Tabebuia serratifolia, up to 20m with beautiful red blossoms) whose bark is used to brew tea (boil for 4-5 minutes, brew for another 15-20min.).
The list of essential, healthy ingredience is long. Lapacho is detoxicating, blocks inflamation and cancer growth, strenghtens the immune system and wound healing, lowers high blood pressure and fever and is used against depression.
Herbal tea is a infusion of one or multiple herbs and/or spices.
In the past they were mostly used as medicine. With the progress of medical science herbs fell into oblivion. Nowadays herbal infusions are re-discovered. They do not contain caffeine but minerals and vitamins instead. Best known are camomile, nettle and mint infusions (see our range here).
Fruit tea is made from fruits of all kind. The range of these teas is virtually unlimited. The basis is usually hibiscus, hawthorn and apple enriched with different fruits and flavours. They can be drunk hot and cold and at any time of the day.
Knipschildt Chocolatier
Looking for the most expensive chocolate in the world? Knipschildt’s “La Madeline au Truffe” is exactly what are you looking for. Its’ price is $250 for a dark chocolate - about $2600 for a pound. This chocolate with a French black truffle inside is made of 70% Valrhona cacao, which is blended into a creamy ganache with truffle oil. The truffle is then hand-rolled with a dark truffle on the inside and dusted with cocoa powder. Finally it is packed in a silver box.
Chocolatier was founded in 1999 by Fritz Knipschildt, who got his culinary education as a chef in Denmark. He is also selected as a part of “40 under 40? in Fairfield Country. Fritz climes that all of his chocolate is artisan and made by hand, also he says, that his chocolate is a memorable one of a kind taste. Is it true? You can order and judge yourself.
Chocolate it originates from a Nahuatl word meaning “bitter water”, comprises a number of raw and processed foods that originate from the seed of the tropical cacao tree. It is a common ingredient in many kinds of confections such as chocolate bars, candy, ice cream, cookies, cakes, pies, chocolate mousse, and other desserts. It is one of the most popular (or at least recognizable) flavours in the world.
Chocolate was used by the Mesoamerican civilizations, using seeds of the Theobroma cacao tree, which was cultivated by many pre-Columbian civilizations such as the Maya and Aztec. The seeds were ground and mixed with water for use as a basic component in a variety of beverages, both sweet and bitter, which were reserved for only the highest noblemen and clerics. Chocolate is made from the fermented, roasted, and ground beans taken from the pod of the tropical cacao tree, Theobroma cacao, which was native to lowland tropical South America, Central America and Mexico, but is now cultivated throughout the tropics. The beans have an intensely flavoured bitter taste. The resulting products are known as “chocolate” or, in some parts of the world, cocoa.
Today, chocolate commonly refers to bars made from the combination of cocoa solids, fat, sugar and other ingredients, which has a melting point just below body temperature. It contains alkaloids such as theobromine and phenethylamine, and has numerous physiological effects on the body: it has been linked with seratonin levels in the brain, and in some animals it is even toxic.
Chocolate is often produced as small molded forms in the shape of squares, animals, people, or inanimate objects to celebrate festivals worldwide. For example, there are moulds of rabbits or eggs for Easter, coins for Hanukkah, Saint Nicholas (Santa Claus) for Christmas, and hearts for Valentine’s Day. Chocolate can also be made into drinks (called cocoa and hot chocolate), as originated by the Aztecs and the Mayas. In England, Samuel Pepys records in his diaries at least two entries relating to “jocolatte” as early as the 1660s. Later, in 1689 Hans Sloane developed a milk chocolate drink in Jamaica initially used by apothecaries, but later sold by the Cadbury brothers.
Scientists Demonstrate Best Way To Use Caffeine
Here is some useful news you can use. Morning “big gulp” coffee drinkers are misusing the power of caffeine. Researchers at the Sleep Disorders Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago along with colleagues at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School have shown that caffeine is best admnistered in a larger number of smaller doses with the doses coming later in the day.
Chicago - People who take small amounts of caffeine regularly during the day may be able to avoid falling asleep and perform well on cognitive tests without affecting their nighttime sleep habits.
Researchers from Rush University Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School have discovered that caffeine works by thwarting one of two interacting physiological systems that govern the human sleep-wake cycle. The researchers, who report their findings in the May issue of the journal SLEEP, propose a novel regimen, consisting of frequent low doses of caffeine, to help shift workers, medical residents, truck drivers, and others who need to stay awake get a bigger boost from their tea or coffee.
“I hate to say it, but most of the population is using caffeine the wrong way by drinking a few mugs of coffee or tea in the morning, or three cups from their Starbuck’s grande on the way to work. This means that caffeine levels in the brain will be falling as the day goes on. Unfortunately, the physiological process they need to counteract is not a major player until the latter half of the day,” said James Wyatt, PhD, sleep researcher at Rush University Medical Center and lead author on the study.
Though many studies have measured caffeine’s sleep-averting effects, most do not take into account that sleep is governed by two opposing but interacting processes. The circadian system promotes sleep rhythmically—an internal clock releases melatonin and other hormones in a cyclical fashion. In contrast, the homeostatic system drives sleep appetitively—it builds the longer one is awake. If the two drives worked together, the drive for sleep would be overwhelming. As it turns out, they oppose one another.
Caffeine is thought to block the receptor for adenosine, a critical chemical messenger involved in the homeostatic drive for sleep. If that were true, then caffeine would be most effective if it were administered in parallel with growing pressure from the sleep homeostatic system, and also with accumulating adenosine.
To test their hypothesis, the scientists studied 16 male subjects in private suites, free of time cues, for 29 days. Instead of keeping to a 24-hour day, researchers scheduled the subjects to live on a 42.85–hour day (28.57-hour wake episodes), simulating the duration of extended wakefulness commonly encountered by doctors, and military and emergency services personnel. The extended day was also designed to disrupt the subjects’ circadian system while maximizing the effects of the homeostatic push for sleep.
Following a randomized, double-blind protocol, subjects received either one caffeine pill, containing 0.3 mg per kilogram of body weight, roughly the equivalent of two ounces of coffee, or an identical-looking placebo. They took the pills upon waking and then once every hour. The goal of the steady dosing was to progressively build up caffeine levels in a way that would coincide with—and ultimately, counteract—the progressive push of the homeostatic system, which grows stronger the longer a subject stays awake.
The strategy worked. Subjects who took the low-dose caffeine performed better on cognitive tests. They also exhibited fewer accidental sleep onsets, or microsleeps. EEG tests showed that placebo subjects were unintentionally asleep 1.57 percent of the time during the scheduled wake episodes, compared with 0.32 percent for those receiving caffeine. Despite their enhanced wakefulness, the caffeine-taking subjects reported feeling sleepier than their placebo counterparts, suggesting that the wake-promoting effects of caffeine do not replace the restorative effects gained through sleep.
Coffee, tea, and other caffeine-containing beverages are tools. Don’t drink more than you need to and slow the rate of your drinking to spread it out. Keep in mind that once you reach the point where you don’t need to maintain a high feeling of wakefulness that you should immediately stop drinking it. If you need something more powerful then consider Provigil (modafinil). My strongly felt advice is to stay away from methamphetamine or other amphetamines because they cause brain damage. I don’t have any specific knowledge about toxic effects of caffeine or modafinil on neurons. But sleep deprivation is definitely harmful. A life lived with a constant need for anti-sleep stmulants is a life that is in need of some serious restructuring to allow for more sleep time.
Caffeine is a xanthine alkaloid compound that acts as a stimulant in humans. The word comes from the Italian term for coffee, caff?. Caffeine is also called guaranine when found in guarana, mateine when found in mate, and theine when found in tea. It is found in the leaves and beans of the coffee plant, in tea, yerba mate, and guarana berries, the kola nut, the Yaupon Holly, and in small quantities in cocoa. Overall, caffeine is found in the beans, leaves, and fruit of over 60 plants, where it acts as a natural pesticide that paralyzes and kills certain insects feeding on the plants.
Caffeine is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant, having the effect of temporarily warding off drowsiness and restoring alertness. Beverages containing caffeine, such as coffee, tea, soft drinks and energy drinks enjoy great popularity; caffeine is the world’s most widely consumed psychoactive substance, but unlike most other psychoactive substances, it is legal and unregulated in nearly all jurisdictions. In North America, 90% of adults consume caffeine daily. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lists caffeine as a “Multiple Purpose GRAS Food Substance”.
Many natural sources of caffeine also contain widely varying mixtures of other xanthine alkaloids, including the cardiac stimulants theophylline and theobromine and other substances such as polyphenols which can form insoluble complexes with caffeine.
Caffeine is a plant alkaloid, found in numerous plant species, where it acts as a natural pesticide that paralyzes and kills certain insects feeding upon them. The most commonly used caffeine-containing plants are coffee, tea, and to a small extent cocoa. Other, less commonly used, sources of caffeine include the yerba mate and guaran? plants, which are sometimes used in the preparation of teas and energy drinks. Two of caffeine’s alternative names, mateine and guaranine, are derived from the names of these plants.
The world’s primary source of caffeine is the coffee bean (the seed of the coffee plant), from which coffee is brewed. Caffeine content in coffee varies widely depending on the type of coffee bean and the method of preparation used; even beans within a given bush can show variations in concentration. In general, one serving of coffee ranges from 40 milligrams, for a single shot (30 milliliters) of arabica-variety espresso, to about 100 milligrams for a cup (120 milliliters) of drip coffee. Generally, dark-roast coffee has less caffeine than lighter roasts because the roasting process reduces the bean’s caffeine content. Arabica coffee normally contains less caffeine than the robusta variety. Coffee also contains trace amounts of theophylline, but no theobromine.
Tea is another common source of caffeine. Tea usually contains about half as much caffeine per serving as coffee, depending on the strength of the brew. Certain types of tea, such as black and oolong, contain somewhat more caffeine than most other teas. Tea contains small amounts of theobromine and slightly higher levels of theophylline than coffee. Preparation has a significant impact on tea, and color is a very poor indicator of caffeine content. Teas like the green Japanese gyokuro, for example, contain far more caffeine than much darker teas like lapsang souchong, which has very little.
Caffeine is also a common ingredient of soft drinks such as cola, originally prepared from kola nuts. Soft drinks typically contain about 10 to 50 milligrams of caffeine per serving. By contrast, energy drinks such as Red Bull contain as much as 80 milligrams of caffeine per serving. The caffeine in these drinks either originates from the ingredients used or is an additive derived from the product of decaffeination or from chemical synthesis. Guarana, a prime ingredient of energy drinks, contains large amounts of caffeine with small amounts of theobromine and theophylline in a naturally occurring slow-release excipient.
Chocolate derived from cocoa contains a small amount of caffeine. The weak stimulant effect of chocolate may be due to a combination of theobromine and theophylline as well as caffeine. Chocolate contains too little of these compounds for a reasonable serving to create effects in humans that are on par with coffee. A typical 28-gram serving of a milk chocolate bar has about as much caffeine as a cup of decaffeinated coffee.
