The New York Times has a study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest on the health effects of caffeine. The study analyzes various claims made about caffeine, and it also offers a useful chart listing the caffeine content in typical drinks and foods. For instance, at 320 milligrams per 16 ounces, a Starbucks grande coffee has over four times the 80 milligrams of caffeine of a Red Bull.
Other findings by the Times and CSPI:
- Unless you consume more than 575 milligrams, caffeinated drinks don’t actually make you pee more.
- Coffee does not increase the risk of heart disease or cancer
- Even though it stimulates the metabolism, caffeine does not increase weight loss. It does aid exercise, however, by dulling pain and stimulating the body to burn fat instead of carbohydrates.
Sorting Out Coffee’s Contradictions [NYT]
Caffeine Chart [Center for Science in the Public Interest]
(Photo: AutumnRedux)
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Duh! doesn’t anyone think to google these things. I have been telling people this for 2 years now.
p.s. I still have my venti bold every morning @ 10
@GreatMoose: This is largely an individual thing. No one in my family has had kidney stone problems, and we all worship at the Temple of Starbucks, the coffee of the day being our holy water. From what I’ve heard, your sodium consumption is much more important than caffeine
This is decently unrelated, but can someone explain to me the point of decaffeinated coffee? I’m not being sarcastic at all, I really don’t understand it all. Is it that people used to drink coffee and got used to the taste, and now can’t have the caffeine but want that same taste? I guess I feel the same about non-alcoholic beer in my confusion… maybe the reasonings are the same?
@corporatedrone: I can understand. I genuinely enjoy the taste of coffee (not Folgers or other instant coffee, real coffee) and if I were sensitive to caffeine, I would still drink it. Drinking beer, though, is a necessary evil to get to the alcohol. Non alcoholic beer is basically drinking piss water
@TomCruisesTesticles:
That’s correct, it’s largely a genetic thing, and many things can cause them. I get caffeine and calsium stones, both aggravated by sodium. I should have said that caffeine CAN cause kidney stones. They suck.
@GreatMoose: I don’t mean to quibble or split hairs, just going on what my urologist told me
so… not drinking starbucks coffee is why I am getting fat… interesting… I have so much extra money from not buying grossly overpriced beverages from snotty retail outlets and therefore being able to buy too much food… OK…
“Unless you consume more than 575 milligrams, caffeinated drinks don’t actually make you pee more.”
I don’t profess to be a math wiz, but doesn’t 575 mg convert to about a quarter of an ounce? I think it’s safe to say that most coffee drinkers consume at least this amount, placing the drink in question squarely in “makes me pee” territory.
Someone please tell me if I’m way off on this conversion. Learning is fun!
I took caffeine pills in medical school, and people were always appalled when I would tell them. The pills can be a rational decision.
I don’t like coffee, diet colas taste disgusting, and regular cola is loaded with sugar. A 200mg caffeine pill with a glass of water was quite palatable and a good study aid.
Yet, it was viewed as less socially acceptable than downing cup after cup of coffee.
I call BS on more than 575 milligrams of caffeine required to act as a diuretic.
@chiieddy: “A grande HOT coffee (just a coffee) at Starbucks is less than $2, not $4. $4 is for specialty drinks which include espresso shots.”
If you actually read what I said, that is exactly what I originally stated. I was pointing out that the other poster’s logic was off because he assumed that a grande coffee is $4.00. I corrected him and said that a grande coffee, in most areas, is under $2.00 with tax. When I worked for Starbucks a few years ago, the price was $1.75 after tax (Seattle market).
@Mike8813: Milligrams of caffeine. Liquids are not measured in grams. If that were the case, there’d be over 20,000 milligrams of caffeine in a cup of coffee. You would most certainly die
@corporatedrone: This is decently unrelated, but can someone explain to me the point of decaffeinated coffee?
This may shock you but some people actually like the taste of coffee. The problem is that because of health reasons or because they want to be able to fall asleep they can’t have caffeine. So Decaffeinated coffee allows you to drink coffee without worrying about the effects of the caffeine.
I find that a scoop of ground espresso mixed in the filter basket is great for giving my coffee an extra kick. Just make sure it’s *on top of* what you usually put in.
@kylo4: Might be something else in the Pepsi, or something else you put in your coffee. People who dump sugar and cream in their coffee, or who order liquid dessert from Starbucks, aren’t gonna lose weight.
Black Tiger Coffee FTW. It’s the only ‘hypercaffeinated’ coffee I’ve found that doesn’t taste awful. Unfortunately only Coffee People sells it, and they’re not local.
@TomCruisesTesticles: Thank you! I figured I must have been way off. Interesting name by the way… Yup, interesting.
@Mike8813: Kiss me
When I do go to Starbucks I get a “Large Double Black Eye” Their Large(whateveri) coffee with two double shots of espresso.
This is also the only time I put sugar in my coffee. Black at work and just milk at home or restaurant, but the black eye needs some sugar and milk.
@strathmeyer: You’d have to consume 1.32 GALLONS of DDP to get 575mg of caffeine. You would probably pee at your normal rate for consuming that much liquid – same as milk, water, etc. It wouldn’t be until you exceeded that intake that you peed more often than the original frequency.
@cobaltthorium: It’s probably caffeine tolerance at work. Of course, that very specific cutoff without additional data is worrisome, as many other commenters have noted.
I’ve drank, on separate occasions, a grande iced starbucks and 4 redbulls. Each time I did so within the span of an hour. Way more buzzed on the red bulls – they have different ingredients (mainly the taurine) in excess.
iced grande is probably diluted quite a bit by the ice though. a regular coffee with or without espresso is what you get for caffeine. generally the other fancy drinks are more about taste than caffeine
I wish companies would start labelling exactly how much caffeine is in their products. Some things contain it that you would never think of and for a person that has to avoid it (like me) it’s hard to tell what to avoid and not to avoid sometimes.
I think people have a right to know what they’re putting in their bodies, and an honest label is just about the only way to make an educated choice.
At least now we have a logical explanation for why people keep buying Star*ucks coffee, because I knew damn well it wasn’t for the acidic burnt-to-hell taste. Damn caffeine junkies.
Ummmm.
Just a thought – the voluminous urination encountered after drinking, say, 2 litres of Dr. Pepper could be related to the fact that you drank 2 litres of .
Though an additional 575 mg of caffeine wouldn’t hurt the diuresis.