The World of Caffeine

by Bennett Alan Weinberg, Bonnie K. Bealer

How much do we really know about our number one drug of choice? This book, a natural, cultural, and artistic history of our favourite mood enhancer tells us more, by looking at how caffeine was discovered, its early uses, and the unexpected parts it has played in medicine, religion, painting, poetry, learning and love. "The World of Caffeine" is a captivating tale of art and society containing many stories including: how Balzac's addiction to caffeine drove him to eat coffee and may have killed him; how a mini Ice Age may have helped bring coffee, tea and chocolate to popularity in Europe; and how caffeine, in its various forms, was used as cash in China, Africa, Central America and Egypt.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Food, Food History, Reference, Social

416 pages, Paperback

First published December 5, 2000

Reviews

[Carolyn Ivy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, though it had far more history than science. They write well about the rise of the three great caffeinated beverages (coffee, tea, and chocolate) and their similar trajectories from secret beverage of religious men to the guilty pleasures they are now. She connects the popularity of the beverages to important social movements. I found it amusing that the arguments about coffee and tea that we have currently date back hundreds of years.

I thought it dragged a bit in the middle, but by then I was tired of the history and longed to learn about the science.

The science section is well done and understandable. I would have liked to read more on the science of caffeine, but what I learned was fascinating. I am particularly enamoured by the idea that caffeine's molecular structure is so similar to the constituents of the nucleotides that form RNA and DNA that it may introduce errors into cell reproduction and yet there is no evidence connecting caffeine with such harm. Also, the idea that caffeine is metabolized differently depending on gender, smoking status and other aspects of the caffeine consumer was also interesting. It did what good books always do, it made me look at my world a bit differently and left me with interesting questions.

[Chris Herdt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm far from a connoisseur of coffee or tea, but I do drink a fair amount and thought it would be best to learn a little something about it. I've been skipping around sections of this book for the past month or so. It covers a variety of topics relating to caffeine and caffeine vehicles, primarily focusing on coffee, tea, and chocolate.

Although the history of how these caffeine-imbued botanicals traveled from Arabia, Asia, and the Americas to Europe and the history of how they were popularized is fascinating, I was more interested in the details of how caffeine affects the body. I am pleased to say that caffeine in moderate doses is harmless, although you will get a withdrawal headache if you miss a day, and that the information in the book has led me to take some chocolate in the morning, as the methylxanthine theobromine (a cousin to caffeine) can slow the metabolism of caffeine.

Also, energy drinks that say they contain no caffeine but contain guarana? Liars. It just means that it does not contain added caffeine--guarana naturally contains caffeine, as does yerba mate.

[987643467881 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was initially a bit skeptical about this book since it seemed to be a rather vast interdisciplinary project to undertake – it seemed to me somewhat too ambitious to include the all the history, science (including chemistry, medicine, biology, botany, etc.) and cultural significance (including anthropology, sociology, etc.) of caffeine in one book without compromising on at least some of the integrity of each of the individual areas of research/scholarship. I thought it would be all over the place, but it was just the opposite: it's actually very well researched, structured and organised.

A few other positives of the book:
The sources are documented very well and the authors clearly distinguish between romanticised myths, debatable theories and, as yet, undisputed facts. I was also impressed by the fact that the authors had a professor in a relevant field review the medical and scientific sections of the book – it made me trust the authors more, not only because they weren't arrogant enough to publish the material without it being reviewed (which unfortunately is not an uncommon practice with popular science books), but also because they respected their readers enough to think that this merited a mention in the preface (the authors are not medical professionals after all – interestingly, and oddly, enough, I couldn't find either of the author's credentials online, not even in their own website's About Us section, http://worldofcaffeine.com/about/).

I also appreciated that the authors told absolutely no gimmicky personal stories (a common feature of many popular science books), despite there being numerous opportunities in the book for them to do so (based on their website, coffee seems to be a sort of personal passion and hobby for them, for which I'm sure they have countless of personal stories and anecdotes). In fact there wasn't a single I, Me or My to be found in the whole book; We and Our are only used in the sense of “us all” (for example: we often think of caffeine as...., etc.) – yes, I searched the whole text :).

Also, the book is divided into 5 very clear sections with many subsections, so anyone wanting to only read about a specific issue relating to caffeine can just skip to the relevant section, and each section is a sort of brief summary of a specific topic with numerous references and sources that you can follow up on should you want to pursue the topic in more detail.

The negative aspects of the book are a bit more subjective than the positive ones. I found many of the sections a bit dull and boring. A coffee connoisseur I am not, but as a ritualistic coffee drinker I was genuinely curious about the topic as a whole and, naturally, found the sections on coffee far more interesting than those on tea, cacao, and other sources of caffeine, however even the sections on coffee had their fair share of boring bits. As a whole, I thought Parts 1-3 (dealing mostly with history, sociology and culture) were a bit boring, I really enjoyed Part 4 (dealing with chemistry, botany and medicine), and found Part 5 (dealing with the health implications) frustratingly inconclusive for the most part.

A quick summary of the 5 parts of the book (with some of the highlights):

Part 1: Caffeine in History: This dealt with the origins of coffee, tea and cacao use (the discovery of the plants, the substances made from them, the origins of the words, etc.).

Part 2: Europe Wakes Up to Caffeine: The history of coffee, tea and cacao consumption in Europe.

Part 3: The Culture of Caffeine: Caffeine/tea/coffee culture in Japan, England and America (coffee houses, cafe culture, etc.), including sections with the following titles: “America, Land of the Free – Refill” and “Cola as a Cultural Icon”.
The section I found most interesting in this part was: “The Straight Dope: Vivarin, NoDoz, and Other Caffeine Pills” which detailed how caffeine, the only “alertness aid” approved by the FDA, is marketed to it's target groups (which apparently primarily consist of college students, truck drivers and body builders).

Part 4: The Natural History of Caffeine
This was the only part of the book that I actually really enjoyed. It's divided into two sections:
1) Caffeine in the Laboratory, which included 2 particularly interesting sub-sections about the metabolism of caffeine (which happens in every cell in every part and fluid of the body, including semen, and how it differs depending on an individual's composition, weight, sex, eating habits, whether or not they smoke or drink, what stage of pregnancy they may be in, etc.) and the mechanism of action of caffeine (how and why caffeine has the affect that it has on the body and the different theories and debates surrounding that).

2) Caffeine and the Plant Kingdom, this was the best part of the whole book for me. It included sections on why certain plants contain caffeine, the different varieties of the coffee, tea and cacao plants, their life cycles, their cultivation, where they grow best, how they are harvested, etc.
The most memorable part of this section was the irony of the coffee plant essentially committing suicide after about 25 years while the tea plant that could, in theory, live for thousands of years, has it's life cut short before ever being allowed to flower and seed.
The caffeine that the coffee plant produces as a biochemical weapon (with antibiotic, anti-fungal, pest-killing properties) to kill/deter harmful bacteria and destructive insects eventually permeates the plant's surrounding soil (through the plant's fallen leaves and berries) and after reaching a certain concentration of toxicity eventually poisons and kills the plant itself. The coffee plant is essentially “hoisted by its own petard.” Because of this, coffea robusta, as a result of it's higher caffeine production/content, is much hardier than coffea arabica, but also has a shorter life cycle.
By contrast, the tea bush (the oldest of which is at least 1700 years old and is still presumably growing in China, in the Xishuangbanna region of Yunnan near the Burma border) is constantly pruned in order to stimulate the growth of flush (the young leaves used to make tea) so it is never allowed to go through it's natural life cycle which would mean the plant ceasing to yield flush, the sap passages gradually becoming obstructed, the twigs hardening into wood, and the leaves becoming large, tough and unsuitable for brewing tea with. After about 50 years of pruning, the yield begins to decrease and the tree is uprooted and replaced without ever fulfilling it's full life cycle.
Is it just me or is there something tragically poetic in that?

Part 5: Caffeine and Health
I initially thought this part of the book would be the most interesting since in theory this is the part that could have practical implications for a coffee drinker like myself. Instead, it was filled with a mix of 1) research with very interesting results but without any clear implications and 2) questionable studies with flawed methodology and inconclusive results. I'm not sure if I can fault the authors for this though, they seemed to accurately portray and interpret the research that exists out there, and provided their questions and critiques – it's not their fault the studies are so inconclusive after all.

This part of the book was divided into 3 sections:
1) Caffeine and the Body (with sections on how caffeine might affect everything from the cardiovascular system and weight loss to fertility and a fetus during the different stages of gestation).
2) Thinking Over Caffeine: Cognition, Learning and Emotional Well-being, which can basically be summarised in one line: knowing your body and how caffeine affects you personally in varying doses at different times of the day can help you to use it to your advantage for alertness, focus, pain relief, energy, etc. (incidentally, the authors followed this book up with another one called The Caffeine Advantage: How to Sharpen Your Mind, Improve Your Physical Performance and Achieve Your Goals – The Healthy Way).
3) Caffeine Dependence, Intoxication and Toxicity (here the most interesting thing I learned is that a lethal dose of caffeine for the average adult is about 10 grams (or more specifically about 150mg per kilogram of body weight), so approximately 100 cups of coffee :).

In the introduction to the Part 5 the authors write:

“...what do we really know of caffeine? What do we know of what it is doing for us,
doing to us, even doing to our unborn children? The answer, as should become clear after reviewing the very impressive record of studies presented in the following chapters and the appendices, and evaluating both the findings and limitations of this research, is, 'not nearly as much as we need to know.'”

In a way, if the result of all that research (which by the way is a whole lot of research) is that we still don't know as much as we need to know, could there perhaps be an argument made for exactly the opposite - that what this really shows is that we actually know much more than we really need to? I mean that in reference to the inconclusive studies and how so far, the average tea/coffee drinker wouldn't necessarily have any reason to stop consuming caffeine in moderation (and to their advantage), and not in terms of future research, which could potentially reveal more conclusive results.
That being said, I appreciated the authors cautiously positive tone when it came to the health effects of moderate caffeine consumption. The only areas that they seemed to take a more negative stance on were the cases of caffeinated beverages for children (which they quite obviously viewed negatively, and rightfully so, in my humble opinion) and on the debate on whether or not caffeine negatively affects expectant mothers, unborn children, and breastfeeding mothers/babies (which the authors appeared to be more weary and uncertain about than the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric & Neonatal Nurses or The American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Drugs who stand by the assertion that: moderate caffeine consumption (defined as 300mg, approximately 2-3 cups, a day) has no effect on breast feeding).

So, how to rate a book that I thought was a good book overall, but that I did not necessarily enjoy reading for the most part? This was a tough one to rate.

[Alejandro Yañez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Largo y tedioso en momentos. Pero por el lado positivo es una lectura muy completa sobre no solo la cafeína si no todos sus similares a lo largo de la historia.

[Bradon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book was a good book that had a lot of good facts and was very informing. The World of Caffeine has a lot of subsections from the history of caffeine to all current uses. This book talks about the drug use and other ways people have used it. This book was really effective and I used it on a few reports I had to write throughout the term. This book also made me wonder about the safety and use of caffeine everyday. I began to wonder why people use it so much even though there are innumerable consequences some short term some long term. The book also showed me that there is a lot more research that needs to be done on caffeine to truly tell how dangerous it could be. The book was interesting and helped me realize this. If you want to casually read a book I would not recommend it because you need to research out some of the terms and events talked about in the book. The book explains what other cultures use in place of caffeine or with caffeine. Such as truckers in Africa use something known as Kava Kava which is a stimulant illegal here. The book is filled with so much information that I would consider reading it again to get it all. This book has sparked curiosity which is all it takes to change an average book to a good book.

[Jakub Šindelář · Rating 3 out of 5]

I ended up thinking I have read enough about caffein in about a third of the book and did not feel motivated enough to finish it till the end. Well researched and complex look from various angles of the subject.

[Captain Curmudgeon · Rating 3 out of 5]

More than you want to know, but central mysteries remain: the
universality of it (97 percent of us are addicts), the fact that it is a drug with dependency problems, the cultural
timing, the undecided balance between benefits and harm.

[Marcelle]

fairly academic. i confess i skimmed a lot.

[Marcella Bongiovanni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Must per chi vuole approfondire la storia della caffeina (o teina)

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating, and highly informative

Before the advent of caffeine beverages in Europe, which didn't happen until the seventeenth century, what did people drink? Mostly they drank beer. Indeed for breakfast it was typical to have beer soup sopped up with bread. There were no stimulant beverages available, and people did not generally drink water since safe water was not readily available. Such a world it must have been with most people drinking alcoholic beverages from sun up to sun down! Then came first cacao, and then coffee and tea, and our world changed. It is interesting to realize that part of the value of cocoa, coffee and tea is the fact that they are consumed in water that has been boiled. The health benefits of drinking safe water made habitual by the mildly addictive force of caffeine turned out to be a boon to human kind. Such a delicious irony.

In this thoroughly informative book about caffeine, with an emphasis of course on the two most widely consumed caffeine beverages, tea and coffee, you will learn the facts and the folklore, the history and the pharmacology of the world's favorite drug. Weinberg and Bealer begin with the origins of coffee and tea in Part I: "Caffeine in History," followed by its arrival and widespread use in Europe in Part II: "Europe Wakes Up to Caffeine." Part III is "The Culture of Caffeine" including knowledge about such things as the tea ceremony in Japan, the famous Oxford Coffee Club and the birth of the Royal Society in England and the rise of the coffee houses. The story of Coca-Cola in America and the advent of what the authors call (p. 195) "The Straight Dope: Vavarin, NoDoz, and Other Caffeine Pills," is detailed. The cultural "duality" between coffee and tea is expressed and a two-columned list presented in which, for example, coffee is associated with the male and tea with the female; coffee with indulgence and tea with temperance; coffee with excess and tea with moderation; Americans versus the English, Balzac versus Proust, etc.

I found the last two parts of the book, Part IV: "The Natural History of Caffeine," and Part V: "Caffeine and Health" the most interesting. The chemistry of caffeine is therein discussed and information is given about how much caffeine is in various beverages (Starbucks decaffeinated coffee, for example, was found to actually have 25 mg of caffeine, while an average cup of regular java contains anywhere from 40 to 180 mg). Maté and guarana, caffeine drinks popular in South America, are compared with coffee and tea, as well as with cacao (the source of chocolate), and the cola nut (which is typically chewed), along with the bark of a tree from which something called yoco tea is made. Even betel, khat, ephedra and coca leaves are brought into the discussion. The mental and physical effects of caffeine are assessed as well as that of other methylzanthines found in caffeine plants, such as theobromine and theophylline. Caffeine's effect on memory, depression, aggression, alertness, etc. are looked into, and the question of whether caffeine is a drug of abuse is addressed.

I must say that I found just about everything I wanted to know about caffeine in this book. It is easily the best book on the subject that I know of. The presentation is readable and entertaining with tables, photos, black and white prints, and cartoons augmenting the text. There's even some poetry. One of the most interesting illustrations shows four spider webs spun by spiders each "under the influence" of a different drug, marijuana, benzedrine, chloral hydrate and caffeine. Guess which web is the most distorted?

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

[Nick Hernandez · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book because I like history and LOVE coffee! It’s a bit difficult to get through as it is packed with facts based on some incredibly detailed research. Because of the level of detail, I’d like to give it 5 stars.

The first half of the book has most of the history of caffeine but is put together poorly. The dates are not even close to being in chronological order like every other history book and thus it is INSANELY difficult to follow as the topics and timeframes continue to jump around. It’s as if there was no outline at all for the drafting of this book. It is because of this scattered approach that I gave it three stars.

Again, a good book with tons of facts about caffeine which I would says puts this as THE source on caffeine (coffee, tea, and chocolate) . . . provided you can stick it out to get through the volume.

[Vämpiriüs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kniha dobře rozepisuje vzestup kávy, čaje a čokolády přičemž se více zaměřuje na historii a vědu dle mého drží jen okrajově. Obsahuje spoustu dobrých faktů a je i velmi poučná. Pojednává i o užívání drog a dalších způsobech, jak je lidé užívali a celkově kniha oplývá spoustou informací. Místy může být čtení nudné a nutí čtenáře k přeskočení pár listů, každopádně se jedná o velmi slušnou knihu.

[Sui Azanza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me tomo bastante terminarlo a pesar de lo mucho que me interesa el tema de la cafeína.
El libro tiene muchos datos interesantes pero también demasiado relleno, en ocasiones le dan demasiadas vueltas a un tema y esto hace que se vuelva pesado.

Aparte de ser un libro que se siente desactualizado (2012).

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interessante approfondimento sul mondo delle bevande caffeinate, pieno di aneddoti e curiosità.

[Alyssa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite dry. The plentiful quotations are interesting but also quite disruptive.

[María Villalta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Resultado de una intensa investigación, este libro es un ameno recorrido por los aspectos histórico, científico y cultural de la cafeína.

[Deedee]

Dewey 613.8

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an easy read (lots of chemistry) but well worth reading

[Parasara Sridhar Duggirala · Rating 1 out of 5]

https://psduggirala.blogspot.com/2020...

[Dp4s · Rating 5 out of 5]

Food
- History

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I kind of think that they were paid by coffee interests to write this book, but I enjoy the history.

[Julie H. Ernstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a wonderful social history of all things caffeinated--including (of course) coffee and chocolate. Very informative and highly interesting reading.

[Ali]

good

[Camille Baird · Rating 4 out of 5]

a fascinating book with lots of great info.

[Islam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoy reading this book with a cup of coffee :)

This book will make you surprised how much history and culture is there around caffeine containing beverages. Very enriching book indeed.

[Jonathan Rosenthal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating information. A bit repetitive and arrogant at times but lots of fascinating information!

[~☆~Autumn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parts of this were fascinating but other parts were very boring so I skipped over those.

[Kate]

It was pretty good, I just lost my appetite for caffeine information.