Generation jitters: are we addicted to caffeine?

Caffeine is the drug many of us can't live without – but do you have any idea how much is in your daily hit?Propped up on my desk before me, there is a vacuum-sealed bag of white powder. Chemists would recognise this substance as a methylated xanthine, composed of tiny crystalline structures. It is a drug, and I have been under its influence nearly every day for the past 25 years. It is caffeine, and in moderation it makes us feel good. But it is a drug whose strength is consistently underestimated. You'd need to down about 50 cups of coffee at once, or 200 cups of tea, to approach a lethal level of caffeination – but if you go straight for the powder, you can get a lot very quickly.On 9 April 2010, 23-year-old Michael Bedford was at a party near his home in Mansfield. He ate two spoonfuls of caffeine powder he'd bought online, and washed them down with an energy drink. He began slurring his words, then vomited, collapsed and died. It's likely he ingested more than 5g of caffeine. The coroner cited caffeine's "cardiotoxic effects" as the cause of death.How much caffeine is the average person taking on daily? When someone asks about our caffeine habits, we tend to reply in terms of how many cups of coffee we drink. But this is a wildly inadequate measure. One 40ml cup of coffee – the size often used in studies of caffeine consumption – could have less than 60mg of caffeine, while one 450ml cup could have nearly 10 times as much, but both could be co...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Tags: The Guardian Coffee Soft drinks Health & wellbeing Food Society Drugs Extracts Features Life and style Science Source Type: news