1. Espresso – Even decaffeinated espresso or decaffeinated coffee is not free of caffeine; the amount of caffeine has just been reduced. The effects of caffeine on children will be exaggerated due to their small size, and as anyone who has ever had to skip their morning coffee knows, caffeine is a drug without which withdrawal symptoms will be experienced. At what age do you really want to introduce that to your children? It is also important to note that to remove caffeine from coffee beans a chemical solvent must be used.

2. Honey – Honey is a food that should not be given to children under a year old. It can contain a type of bacteria that can cause infant botulism. It is dangerous enough that infants should not be given even baked foods that contain honey. While some doctors do not forbid certain potential allergens be given to young children, especially if they have been cooked first, such as strawberries, I have not found any doctor that recommends allowing a child under the age of one to eat honey. While toddlers may be able to digest honey, it is recommended that they be given very little at first and watched for several days to ensure there is no reaction.

3. Steamed milk – If adults need warning labels that coffee drinks are hot and could burn them, we need to pay attention to the temperature of what we are giving very young children.

Perhaps my biggest concern is that these seem to be marketed toward infants and toddlers. Certain ingredients are simply not appropriate for infants. At the proper temperature, steamed milk would be a healthier choice than hot chocolate for a preschool or school-aged child. In some cultures, children are allowed to have coffee from young ages, generally mixed heavily with milk and sugar. Even regular coffee will not be fatal to a preschool or school-aged child…..

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TAMPA BAY, Fla. — Everyone has their pick for perking up. There’s coffee, soda, energy shots, and now there’s a spray.

News of its arrival locally is sprayed across the sign outside Rockin’ Cards and Gifts in Pinellas Park.

“Why stand in line at Starbucks or McDonalds with all those nerds?” asks store owner Randy Heine. ”Just spray this and you have the same feeling.”

That’s right: companies that make these sprays say one dose carries up to as much caffeine as a cup of coffee.

“I stayed awake and cleaned my house over and over,” Heine recalls after using the product for the first time.

A 16-ounce cup of coffee from Starbucks can cost you about $2, and is typically consumed in a day. The spray costs about $5 for a quarter ounce. But if companies are correct about how powerful one spray is, a container can hold liquid equal to about 100 cups of coffee.

Tired college students like Wesley Valdyke chug a couple cups of coffee each day, and even more during exams.

“It doesn’t affect me too much,” he says. ”It gives me a little boost of energy.”

So he’d think about trying caffeine spray, with some hesitation.

“Is it good for you?” he asks. ”Is it not good for you?”

That’s what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration may eventually look into because of some concerns about safety brought up by U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) and others. Right now, the spray’s sold as a dietary supplement in the U.S., so it’s never required FDA approval before hitting shelves.

Heine disagrees with any effort to ban caffeine spray altogether, but he has an idea to help regulate it at the local level.

“Here’s what I propose – that you must be over the age of 18 to purchase these types of products,” he says.

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Question: What?s better for me: coffee or tea?

Answer: Now that?s a very good question. Studies have determined that both coffee and tea have health benefits. Providing you don?t load your coffee ? or tea ? with sugar and cream, either can be a good source of certain nutrients and antioxidants linked to disease prevention.

Let?s start with tea. Fresh tea leaves are an incredibly rich source of phytochemicals called catechins, which have potent antioxidant properties. In fact, tea is one of the highest sources of antioxidants in the North American diet. When it comes to health, most of the research has focused on green tea suggesting the beverage may help lower the risk of certain cancers (breast, ovarian) and heart disease. Regular black tea drinkers have also been found to have a lower risk of developing heart disease.

The strongest evidence for coffee?s health benefits centre around diabetes. Drinking coffee ? at least three cups per day ? has been linked to a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes in a number of studies. Coffee ? caffeinated and decaffeinated ? contains an antioxidant called chlorogenic acid, which has been shown to dampen inflammation in the body, reduce glucose (sugar) absorption and improve how the body uses insulin, the hormone that lowers blood glucose. Coffee also contains magnesium, a mineral linked to blood sugar regulation.

There is a downside with coffee for some people: its high caffeine content. (Tea contains much less caffeine than coffee.) Drinking too much coffee can result in a high intake of caffeine which can disrupt sleep and rob calcium from bones (if you consume too little calcium from foods). And some studies suggest that high intakes of caffeine during pregnancy can increase the risk of miscarriage.

Women of childbearing age should limit caffeine intake to 300 milligrams per day. Other healthy adults can safely consume 400 milligrams daily ? almost 2.5 cups of coffee worth. (One eight ounce cup of regular coffee (filter drip) contains roughly 180 milligrams of caffeine.) One eight ounce cup of black tea has 43 milligrams of caffeine and green tea contains 30 milligrams.

Coffee ? both regular a decaf ? can also trigger heartburn if you have reflux (GERD).

So what?s better for you ? coffee or tea? That really depends on you. If you are not sensitive to caffeine and don?t suffer heartburn, both coffee and tea are considered healthy especially if you skip the sugar.

If it?s antioxidants you?re after, go for green tea which contains about three times more catechins than black tea. …

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The free app, titled Caffeine Zone, was created by doctors Frank Ritter and Kuo-Chuan Yeh. Using an assumption that 200 to 400 mg of caffeine is the optimal amount for mental alertness, the app estimates the level of caffeine in your blood stream at any given time, cluing you in when it’s time for another cup.

The app features two different key “caffeine zones” — a green bar, showing the optimal 200-400 mg range, and a blue bar ranging from 0-50 mg representing the amount of caffiene that should be in your blood stream before going to sleep. Caffeine Zone will even warn you if your next cup of coffee risks you suffering a sleepless night. (Our solution: Just drink really, really small cups of coffee after dark.)

Caffeine Zone supports all different types of caffeine intake, be it gum, coffee, tea, or energy drink. And the app even lets you adjust its settings if you’re especially sensitive to caffeine or especially tolerant. We definitely fall into the latter category.

Not an iOS user? Not a problem — there’s a non-affiliated program called Caffeine Tracker to monitor your caffeine levels if you’ve got an Android phone. The downside is that it’ll cost you 99 cents.

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Reported by the Wall Street Journal, women who drink two to three cups of coffee a day had about a 15% lower risk of developing depression during a 10-year period than women who drink only one cup of coffee or less per week. Consuming four or more cups a day reduced the risk of depression even more, by 20%.

That is the finding of Boston-based researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Scientists say decaf has zero effect, but the caffeine found in coffee could possibly alter the brain’s chemistry.

Eighty percent of the world’s most frequently used stimulant comes from coffee, and now the link between depression and the central nervous system stimulant has been made.

The study used questionnaires over a ten-year period, documenting the caffeine consumption of nurses, a whole lot of them – over 50,000 nurses.

The study’s author, Michel Lucas, found, “Just over 2,600 of the women developed depression over the 10-year period and most tended to be ‘non- or low-coffee drinkers,’” adding, “their work suggests caffeine has a ‘protective effect’ in staving off depression, which is a condition that affects twice as many women than men.”

This is great news for people who are prone to depression and love coffee; however, the study did not conclude that caffeine reduces the actual risk of depression. The experts say not to expect your doctor to start prescribing cups of joe too soon, but the study has opened the door for more studies to see just how far the connection goes.

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It’s the latest baby trend to come out of New York City’s hip Brooklyn neighborhoods–and it’s not pretty.  

Brooklyn’s obsessive coffee culture has spawned “babyccinos” — otherwise known as mini decaf cappuccinos or frothy cups of steamed milk, foam and cinnamon for the little ones, the Brooklyn Paper reports.  At $2 a pop,  the coolest coffee joints are whipping this off-the-menu item to the coos of tots and proud parents alike.  

“Our children love babyccinos!” said Eric Worcester told the Brooklyn Paper. 

Katherine Haver, a freelancer who works out of coffee shops, sometimes with her nearly two-year-old son said her child has been going to cafes since he was a newborn. “‘Coffee shop’ was one of his first words,” she said.

It’s nice to keep your kid preoccupied, and all, but one has to wonder about the health benefits of giving tots hot, steaming milk and espresso –alebiet decaf.

The Brooklyn Paper says the trend started in Australia about a decade ago with milk-only babyccinos and can now be found in all parts of Brooklyn.  Whether it’s spread out of New York is unclear. A quick call to a few of Washington D.C. hipper coffee shops like Tryst Coffeehouse got a surprised reaction when we mentioned the drink.  

The Brooklyn paper reports that there are plans in Australia to sell the world’s first instant babyccino. And like most cutesy baby trends, it is just a matter of time before babyccinos will appear on menus across the country.  

So next time you’re in a coffee shop and toddler next to you is screaming, now you know why.

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Not surprisingly, Starbucks is the most talked-about coffeehouse chain online. But despite being the leader in online conversation volume, the brand is only recommended in about 1 in 200 conversations – while Caribou Coffee earns a recommendation once in every 20 conversations. Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s follow Caribou in the Recommendation Index rankings of the top 10 largest coffeehouse chains operating in the U.S.

“Recommendations drive not only brand perception, but more importantly, purchasing decisions,” said Paul M. Rand, president and CEO of Zocalo Group. “By making the important distinction between a cursory mention and a positive recommendation, we were able to glean more revealing insights about the role that recommendations played within the coffeehouse chain industry.”

The Recommendation Index found that top themes associated with positive coffeehouse chain recommendations include product quality and freshness, brand loyalty and brew consistency. Primary drivers of negative word of mouth point to poor product quality, unskilled baristas and brand detractors – all of which further illustrate the value consumers place in great taste and service when choosing where to buy their coffee.

“The Recommendation Index illustrates that while a brand’s volume of conversation is important, a high volume doesn’t necessarily increase the likelihood that someone will make a recommendation,” commented Zach Mesenbourg, manager of Zocalo Group’s Insights & Analytics Team. “And that scenario is exactly what we saw with Caribou Coffee and Starbucks. While people talked more about Starbucks overall, those who talked about Caribou Coffee were stronger advocates and recommenders.”

Recommendation Index Results………………Read on over here  View the original article here

Researchers from Penn State University announce that they have developed an app called “Caffeine Zone 2” that can prevent problems with sleeping by predicting the levels of caffeine in your body. In addition, the app shows the user when they are reaching their cognitive peak for optimal performance.

Dr. Frank Ritter, professor of information sciences and technology and Dr. Martin Yeh, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, have devised an app that is formulated on a pharmacokinetic model and the user’s input of their caffeine consumption to show the user how much caffeine is currently in their body. The function of this app is to primarily help coffee drinkers monitor and manage their coffee consumption and thereby prevent drinking coffee or other caffeinated drinks too soon before bedtime.

According to the researchers, managing your caffeine levels can be tricky and for many people mismanaging your caffeine consumption often results in sleepless nights due to consuming too much caffeine at the wrong time. However, drinking coffee and other caffeinated beverages does have benefits where staying awake and alert are necessary. Examples include working a job with changing shifts, long distance truck driving and staying up for that all-nighter in college or finishing a project in time for the morning meeting with the boss.

The good news about drinking caffeinated beverages is that they do work as a relatively safe nervous system stimulant and that your body metabolizes caffeine rather quickly. …

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The current pod craze was launched by the huge worldwide success of Nespresso single-serve espresso machines. Since 1986, the company has sold 27 billion of the little pods.

Here in the States, Keurig sold 4 million of its K-Cup brewers in the 13-week run up to Christmas; during the same time, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters sold more than $715 million in K-Cup packs. Keurig licenses its technology, so Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks are making K-Cup pods now too.

Last week, Oliver Strand did some math for The New York Times website and figured out about how much it costs per pound for this precious pod coffee; Trent Hamm, in a post published by the Christian Science Monitor, calculated the price-per-cup. After reading these numbers, you may need to sit down and relax with a nice pot of tea.

Strand’s numbers computed to this: Nespresso Arpeggio espresso costs “about $51 a pound.” Folgers Black Silk coffee blend capsules work out to “more than $50 a pound” as well. Compare this to most high-end coffees, which cost less than $20 per pound. Even the most renowned generally go for less than $30 per pound. A pound of Dark Espresso Roast from Starbucks is, according to Mr. Strand, “$12.95 a pound, and a bag of Eight O’Clock beans for brewed coffee…is $10.72 a pound.”

Hamm’s price-per-cup numbers included factoring in the cost of coffee pots and filters for a regular coffee machine and prorating the price of a single-serve machine in his pod-per-cup prices. Hamm’s price for a cup of regular joe made at home came to thirteen cents. Hamm hunted down the very best possible price for coffee pods — as in those being sold in bulk via Amazon — it still came to $.26 per cup.

Nespresso pods, purchased at Nespresso prices, come to about $.55 per cup, but good news may be on the horizon for those jittery single-serve Nespresso espresso addicts who are perhaps slowly going broke: Ethical Coffee Company is planning to sell Nespresso-compatible pods for “around 20 percent less” on Amazon.com.

My take? If you enjoy a cup of good quality coffee or espresso at home, even $.55 is an insignificant price to pay for a little bit of joy each day.

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Seattle Coffee has released their Valentine’s Day infographic, and while 44 percent of respondents found that the secret to a healthy relationship is a date night, 32 percent thought having coffee together in the morning is more important.

As for Valentine’s Day dinner, Live Science has put together a nifty chart showing that 35 percent of couples will dine at Italian restaurants, whereas French restaurants get 25 percent of lovers. Only 7 percent will wander into a tapas restaurant.

The priciest cities for Valentine’s dinner? New York City, Las Vegas, and Miami, where about 20 percent of residents will be spending $200 or more for dinner.

And if you’re wooing a single woman, only 5.2 percent of single ladies want chocolate, and a measly 1.6 percent want lingerie. Instead, opt for gift certificates that can be shared (chosen by 38 percent of respondents) or flowers. May we suggest peonies?

Check out Seattle Coffee’s infographic below.

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