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Coffee Typically Has Three Times More Caffeine Than Tea Or Cola

National Carbonated Beverage With Caffeine Day is a unique food holiday observed annually on November 19.

Some people cannot have caffeine due to medical reasons, some choose to avoid caffeine for their own reasons and then there are the millions of people who like their caffeine very much.  The same is true with the carbonation in beverages.  Today’s celebration combines the two of them together.

  • In 1767, Englishman Joseph Priestly suspended a bowl of distilled water above a beer vat at a local brewery in Leeds, England which led to the discovery of a method of infusing water with carbon dioxide to make carbonated water.  Priestly’s invention of carbonated water is the major and the defining component of most soft drinks.
  • Caffeine acts as a central nervous system stimulant, temporarily warding off drowsiness and restoring alertness.  Ninety percent of adults in North America consume caffeine daily.   Some people notice sleep disruption after drinking beverages containing caffeine while others see no disturbance at all.
  • In ancient cultures, people believed that bathing and drinking mineral waters from springs, which were naturally carbonated, could cure many diseases. As such, scientists and inventors sought ways to artificially produce these mineral waters.
  • The first flavored carbonated drinks were created in the United States in 1807 by Townsend Speakman.  The purpose of adding flavor wasn’t just to make it taste better, but also to improve on the supposed natural curative properties of mineral water.  Popular ingredients to add were birch bark, dandelions, ginger, lemon, coca, and kola.
  • The father of the soft drink industry is generally held to be German-Swiss jeweler Jacob Schweppe, who was the first large-scale producer of aerated water around 1783.
  • The first known reference of the term “Pop”, as referring to a beverage, was in 1812 in a letter written by English poet Robert Southey; in this letter he also explains the term’s origin: “Called on A. Harrison and found he was at Carlisle, but that we were expected to supper; excused ourselves on the necessity of eating at the inn; supped there upon trout and roast foul, drank some most admirable cyder, and a new manufactory of a nectar, between soda-water and ginger-beer, and called pop, because ‘pop goes the cork’ when it is drawn, and pop you would go off too, if you drank too much of it.”
  • The term “soda-pop” was a moniker given to carbonated beverages due to the fact that people thought the bubbles were produced from soda (sodium bicarbonate), as with certain other products that were popular at that time.  A more correct moniker would have been “carbonated-pop”.
  • Keeping aerated drinks in a bottle was a huge problem for a long time in the distribution of soft drinks.  As such, until the advent of crown cork (crown cap), carbonated beverages were generally only available in pharmacies.
  • Over 1500 types of cork and other bottle stopper patents were filed to attempt to stop aerated drinks from losing their carbonation too quickly. Finally, in 1891, in the United States, William Painter invented the “crown cork”, which gave the first truly effective, mass producible, way to stop the carbonation from escaping from bottled carbonated drinks.   This allowed, for the first time, people to buy carbonated beverages they could store at home.
  • Between 10 and 20 grams of caffeine will kill a person. This is equivalent to 4.69 gallons of coffee.
  • Coffee typically has three times more caffeine than tea or cola.
  • Soldiers during World Wars I and II carried caffeine in the form of tablets to combat exhaustion.
  • Women metabolize caffeine about 25% faster than men
  • Pepsi uses about 1.2 million pounds of caffeine a year to blend into its Mountain Dew for its U.S. markets. Coke and Diet Coke use about 3.5 million pounds a year.[
  • A Starbucks Grande coffee has 320 mg of caffeine, which is over four times the amount of caffeine in a Red Bull.[
  • The human body absorbs caffeine from soft drinks more slowly than from coffee.
  • Because caffeine passes through human tissue so completely, it does not accumulate in body fat as do other psychotropic drugs, such as marijuana.
  • Decaf coffee is not completely caffeine-free; it still has 8.6–13.9 mg of caffeine. A cup of regular drip coffee has around 95–200 mg.
  • Stay Puft Marshmallows have about 100 mg of caffeine per marshmallow―about the same as a shot of espresso.
  • Anthropologists estimate that most of the caffeine-yielding plants were discovered in Paleolithic times as early as 700,000 BC. Early Stone Age people probably chewed on caffeine-bearing plants.
  • A 12-oz can of Sunkist Orange has 41 mg of caffeine, which is more caffeine than in a similar amount of Coca-Cola or Pepsi.
  • When a person first wakes up, their brain is flooded with cortisol, a natural stimulant. So even though a person feels like they need coffee and its caffeine, they should actually wait until later in the day.
  • In 1975, soft drinks surpassed coffee as America’s favorite caffeinated drink.

Sources:

National Day Calendar

Mobile-Cuisine

Fact Retriever