Coffee: Good to you Bad For You?

So a guy comes up to me while I'm selling coffee and says...."you have any tea"? I tell him no and he tells me that I should, because there is a seismic shift towards tea drinking, large enough to create entire continents and I need to get with it.  I was waiting for him to tell me 'all the cool kids are doing it'.  But he went one better (or worse).  He said  "People are switching to tea because it has less caffeine". It was time to dispel the tea myth.  Here it goes: Tea contains more caffeine than coffee by dry weight.  A typical serving contains much less caffeine than coffee because tea is normally brewed much weaker.   His muttered response - as he walked away - was the 'adult' equivalent of 'so what'. To me that's what you say when you have nothing to say but - you want the last word.  Whatever.

Caffeine in general is so ninja, the average person doesn't realize that it's in a lot of stuff  - coffee, tea, many cola drinks and over the counter medication.  Yet coffee always  gets accused of being villain because caffeine is most commonly ingested through coffee.

If you are one of those people who drink several cups of coffee daily, you probably wonder what all that coffee is doing to you. ROFL!  Yeah right! If you're one of THOSE people you  probably don't care!  But seriously, is coffee really bad for you, or is drinking coffee just a harmless vice?  Can it be possible that coffee is actually good for us?  Look at the results of some recent research:  .

• There are nutritional advisers who claim that coffee makes us age faster, wears out our adrenal glands, and wreaks unspeakable damage to our cells.

• In some older people, coffee or tea can improve memory and alertness enough to partly offset the effects of aging. 

• Other researchers claim that coffee, especially if it's freshly roasted and ground, is full of antioxidants, and therefore good for us.  Most doctors say that drinking one or two cups of coffee a day is probably not harmful.  And of course there are others who say we ought to avoid caffeine altogether.

•  Caffeine gives brain cells a temporary boost .  But the amount required to improve mental performance is not very high.  Even half a cup of coffee will be enough to give your brain a boost that lasts several hours.  Which is precisely why many of us drink coffee, especially the first thing in the morning.

For those that are wondering where I'm going with this, here it it is, the definitive response to the raging coffee vs. tea question: Drink the d@%n coffee!

Avoid excessive consumption of coffee ( or anything else for that matter). What's excessive? Depends on the individual.  If  four cups of coffee a day makes you  jittery, nauseous, suffer insomnia, kick the dog, cuss out your boss and walk of your job or demonstrate and other extreme behaviors, you should probably cut back on the caffeine. Seriously. You really should.

If you don't suffer from any of the above by your fourth cup....carry on!

 

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Burgers, Diet Drinks and Lattes

Recently, I had lunch with a fellow Weight Watcher friend--not as in the organization but as in quite literally watching our weight.  These days, we mostly watch the weight climb.  At any rate, over a thankless feast of broiled lemon chicken with brown rice, salad and low cal dressing, etc., my calorie-counting buddy begins once again to lament nonstop about her failure to lose more weight. "I am doing EVERYTHING.  No midnight snacks, following the diet plan, eating only the recommended meals, no substituting ingredients, aerobics, yoga and strength training 5 times a week," she droned on. At this point I had tuned her out to focus my attention on the New York Style cheesecake covered in a mountain of cherries in front of the lady at the table next to mine. I fantasized about snatching it and running, wondering if I could make it to the front door.  I decided that the door was too far away to reach before somebody stopped me.  I tuned back in to my weight watching friend’s woes just in time for her to suggest that we get coffee at the cafe down the street.  We paid our check and left.  The cheesecake stayed behind.
We arrived to the café and approached the counter.  ‘The usual?” suggested the cashier.  As my friend nodded, I noticed that the barista (a term I use loosely) has already started the order.  Curious, I asked her what the usual was, which happened to be a large latte with whole milk, a double shot of vanilla syrup, and whole milk foam. "I love their lattes. I come here twice a day.”  Yikes.  "Dude", I say slowly.  "Do you know how many calories are in that latte you just ordered"?   "What? What are you talking about?” she cried, visibly alarmed.  "It's milk and coffee". So I broke it down for her just like this:
Between the foam and the milk in the latte you’ve got about a cup of milk.  That’s 150 calories.  Two tablespoons of vanilla syrup is 80 calories, which accounts for at least one shot.
"So what you're saying is that I'm drinking almost over  500 calories of coffee a day???” she screamed.  "Yep,” I replied.

I’d like to take this opportunity to raise one of my pet peeves: people who go to drive-thru burger joints, order the works and then PROUDLY order a diet coke. Really??? Why mind the calories now? The damage is done.  Just go ahead and get the regular coke.

Fortunately, all is not lost. You can shave calories off your favorite café and preserve the taste by substituting fat free milk and sugar free syrup, which comes in a large variety of flavors.  If you are watching your weight, be mindful of watching your favorite coffee drinks too.  They may be the very thing that sabotages you—even more so than New York Style Cherry Cheesecake.

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