11 Weird Facts About Coffee Every Starbucks Addict Should Know
1. Most energy drinks don't contain as much caffeine as a Starbucks coffee. Don't believe anyone who tells you those expensive energy drinks have more bang than a cup of coffee. A 16-ounce Monster has about 150 milligrams of caffeine - half the amount of caffeine in a standard Starbucks grandé-sized coffee.
2. It's really easy to get low-key addicted to coffee. As little as 100 milligrams of caffeine daily is enough to get an adult hooked. That's basically two bags of Lipton tea or three cans of Coke. If you stop drinking coffee abruptly, you could experience withdrawal symptoms, including a lack of energy (obvs), irritability, headaches.
3. Coffee works crazy fast. It only takes 10 minutes for caffeine to kick in after the first sip.
4. Coffee beans aren't actually beans. If we wanted to get technical, they're actually the pit of a coffee fruit.
5. The first webcam EVER was invented because of coffee. It might seem random, but when you hear the story, it'll make so much sense. See, long ago, in 1991 at the University of Cambridge in England, people were sick of walking all the way to the coffee pot only to find that it was empty. So, they created a webcam that streamed the state of the coffee pot on a black and white 128x128 window that users could check before they got up to get a cup of coffee. So basically, you have coffee to thank for Skype and FaceTime.
6. The U.S. consumes the most coffee per year. Americans consume 400 million cups of coffee per day, which is basically 146 billion cups of coffee per year! SO. MUCH. COFFEE.
7. Coffee works best if you drink it between 9:30 and 11:30. This is because the levels of cortisol (the hormone that controls your inner clock) drop and caffeine interacts with cortisol. If you drink coffee too early in the morning when your cortisol is high, you'll build up a tolerance that will make you need more coffee to get the same effect.
8. 20% of office coffee mugs contain fecal matter . The fecal matter is apparently spread through the use of an office "sponge," which basically means you'll never want to wash your coffee mug with a sponge again. In other words, bring your internship mug home to wash from now on.
9. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a whole cantata about a girl who's addicted to coffee.
10. The most expensive coffee in the world is extracted from elephants' poop. In Thailand, elephants are fed coffee beans that are later picked out of their poop. The coffee made from the beans is said to taste earthy and smooth.
11. There's a reason coffee doesn't taste as good as it smells. According to scientists, it's because you actually have two senses of smell: the smell that you inhale from the environment, and the burst of aroma that's sent through the back of the nose from inside the mouth when you swallow (which actually accounts for 80% of what you taste). Basically coffee smells better when you inhale it than when you smell it inside your mouth.On top of that, your saliva wipes away about half of that good-smelling taste. Basically, your saliva is working against your taste buds. SMH.
