Expert Article
Society Wants You On This Drug – Here's How You Take It
A comprehensive guide to caffeine and its complications
On a cold morning stumble to the loo, you swing open the bathroom door and do a double-take at the monster in the mirror. That guy needs coffee.
Conventional wisdom agrees with your assessment – and I happen to as well. On your average morning needing an average kick to start off the day, a cup of joe however you like it is the way to go. But what if I told you that there are drinks sold over-the-counter with more than double the caffeine content of that morning coffee? Or that some come to your fridge calorie-free?
Or, that some aren’t even beverages at all?
That’s what we’ll explore here. In the wide world of caffeine, I’ve corralled all of the noise into two distinct categories that you’ll be able to run through the next time you’re deciding how you’ll get that precious pick-me-up:
- Caffeine Content, and
- Health Considerations
We’ll frame our journey through the lens of a theoretical “caffeine aisle” at the grocery store. You’re a customer, and you’re looking at the shiny packaging of the following options:
- Coffee
- Soda
- Energy Drinks
- Caffeine Pills / Chews
Now that I’ve cracked open an energy drink, let’s jump in.
Caffeine Content
How much of an energy boost you get out of something is measured in milligrams of caffeine (mg). The folks at the Food and Drug Administration recommend ingesting no more than 400mg of our favorite chemical per day to avoid issues like anxiety, rapid heart rate, insomnia, and in extreme cases, heart attacks. These sound pretty bad – and they are – but all you have to do to avoid them is keep track of how much of the “c-word” you’re putting into your system.
Great, you’re thinking – but how do you know how much you’re having?
While the National Institutes of Health have not officially required companies to list the amount of the chemical inside their products on their packaging, many still do. Regardless if they’re displaying it in its own little bolded box on the front of the can, in small print in the nutritional facts section, or online, all this information is generally available for inquiring minds.
I assume the logic here is that a consumer who doesn’t feel a sharp pain in the left part of their chest is more profitable for caffeinated products companies down the line.
In general, here’s a tidy little list of amounts for the products available in our imaginary caffeine aisle:
- Coffee: 80mg per standard cup (not that size at Starbucks that barely fits into your cup holder)
- Soda: 30 - 60mg per 12oz can
- Energy Drinks: 80 - 200mg per 12oz can
- Caffeine Pills: 100mg - 200mg per pill
- Caffeine Chews: varies, ~100mg each
I find explaining these amounts in terms of use cases is more helpful than staring at a jumble of numbers for too long. Most people are familiar with the light, temporary social energy you get from a cup of coffee – that’s the effect 80mg has on the average person. Ratcheting that up to around the 120mg mark is where we see players like RedBull stake their claim, where you’ll feel slightly tingly or excitable in addition to a longer-lasting buzz. The 200mg space, where trendy new energy drinks like Celsius and Alani Nu play, is marketed towards consumers with an active lifestyle, boasting effects like accelerating metabolism and more efficient workouts.
While 400mg is the studied“limit” of how much you should ingest in a day, caffeine affects everyone’s body in different ways. In the same way that you can be a “lightweight” or a “tank” when drinking alcohol, it’s important to find what amount of buzz gets you where you want to be. Some can drink 200mg before a class and find it helpful in paying attention, whereas others become jittery and anxious if they aren’t able to move around.
After you’ve found out what amount of caffeine you need for your study sessions, mornings at work, afternoon workouts, or networking events, it’s important to know the health effects that each caffeine product can have on your body.
Health Considerations
The first thing we should get out of the way when it comes to caffeine is that it is unequivocally a drug. This means that people can build a tolerance to it in the same way they can build their tolerance to alcohol or marijuana.
The most prevalent factor caffeine consumers need to consider is tolerance.
If 200mg becomes your go-to dosage for everyday life, this means just two products will put you at the 400mg borderline between healthy and potentially harmful. It’s important to remember that even the strongest energy drinks and pills will only give you the high for four to six hours on the high end. So, if you need 200mg to feel like yourself at work in the morning, it’s likely that you’ll need another hit of the same amount in the afternoon. This is a path to not only turning a desire for caffeine into a need for caffeine, but growing that need to an amount that’s no longer healthy for your body to be consuming each day.
Anecdotally, but still fresh in my mind is a housemate from last year who consumed upwards of 600mg a day of caffeine. On a particularly busy day, it became too much for his body to handle and he had a heart attack. He was 21.
Scary disclaimers out of the way, there are also general health concerns to take into account like calorie content and sugar.
- Soda is obviously the worst performer on this metric – it gives you the weakest kick for the highest amount of calories and sugar.
- Coffee varies. While a cup of black coffee or cold brew has close to zero calories and offers a noticeable buzz, many prefer the annual sugar output of a medium-sized plantation mixed into their brew. If you can take it bitter though, it’s a great caffeine-to-calorie tradeoff.
- Energy drinks toe a similar line to coffee, offering even more caffeine in exchange for funky chemicals, sugar, and preservatives. Celsius has pushed against this trend, however, offering an especially dangerous zero-calorie, zero-sugar offering that still wires you 200mg of caffeine with a “good-enough” taste.
- Energy chews and pills offer the best caffeine-to-calorie tradeoff but run the opposite risk of pushing too much caffeine into your system too quickly. With chews, caffeine is absorbed through the inner lining of your mouth to affect the brain in as little as three minutes. And, there’s no way to cut off the caffeine if you feel like you’ve had too much (where with a drink, you could just stop sipping).
With that all said, caffeine is simply a tool that should be wielded wisely and with discretion.
My Recommendation
As a college student whose main two use cases for caffeine are studying and working out, I trend towards drinking cold brews and energy drinks most frequently. Celsius has been my energy drink of choice because of its caffeine-to-calorie ratio and zero-calorie offering.
I consider myself slightly more caffeine-dependent than the average person, but rationalize this dependency in my mind by understanding my limits and keeping under the 400mg threshold.
However, as I jitteringly wrap up this paper now having finished that Celsius from before, I can say that 200mg is a little much for staring at a screen for a couple of hours. Even for me.
Awesome job, Taylor! As someone who frequently drinks Celsius, this article definitely made me reconsider relying on it for caffeine. I didn't realize that Celsius had that much more caffeine compared than other energy drinks!
ReplyDelete