I have always chosen coffee over tea in spite of health concerns, not because of them.
I always had a sneaking suspicion that it was bad for my blood pressure, or my arteries, or something … but that didn’t stop me.
In fact, the vague anxiety I felt could only be assuaged by another cup of coffee.
But a funny thing turned up in the New York Times the other day. According to an honest-to-goodness medical doctor, coffee is actually good for you!
Dr. Aaron Carroll, Professor of Pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, says that, all things considered, “The potential health benefits (of coffee) are surprisingly large.”
In fact, someday soon we might find that coffee is something that doctors nag us to consume — like yogurt, or kale, or Vitamin D.
I love coffee so much that, even then, I will keep on drinking it…although I enjoyed it more when I thought it was a sin.
Tea apparently confers advantages, too, compared to abstaining — but less than coffee, except for some forms of cancer.
The trouble is, the advantage comes from drinking green tea — and in my experience, grass clippings are tastier.
To me, coffee means the anticipation of something good: a dessert, a conversation with friends, a treat.
Tea, by contrast, reminds me only of being sick with a sore throat.
The smell of coffee, wafting through the house from my mother’s kitchen, meant: company is coming!
Soon there would be special foods, laughter, maybe even a present or two. Most important, it meant all kinds of goodies were unattended in the kitchen, while Mom was distracted by her guests.
If the percolator was still burbling, there was a clear interval for theft. Tea kettles, on the other hand, had a nasty habit of whistling while you were still re-arranging the pastries.
Coffee’s aroma has it all over tea’s.
The actual taste, however, came at first as a huge disappointment. It was like the original Fall from Eden!
I told my kids, if they wanted a taste that would match the scent, they’d have to find some coffee ice cream.
This is no news to Starbucks. I tasted a frappucino the other day — purely in the interests of research — and finally solved the mystery of why people shell out the kind of money it takes to get a Starbucks drink.
It was nothing more nor less than a coffee milkshake!
“Where have you been all my life?” I said out loud to it, after my first sip.
“Is this really your first time?” the drink answered. “Where have you been?”
“I’ve been hiding.”
The truth was, I’d been afraid it would be a gateway drug — and I was right. I had to prove to myself I could toss it out half-finished.
There were at least two drops left at the bottom.
Coffee isn’t just tasty, it’s useful.
Many years ago, I went to a doctor who told me I had to quit caffeine. So I tried.
Alas for me, I had also just started a new job, and discovered the hard way that employers are not favorably impressed by staff who can reliably be found drooling, fast asleep at their desk, every afternoon around 3.
My next job found me back on coffee.
Of course, it is possible to go overboard.
In college I once had a take-home, open-book test which turned into an all-nighter before I knew it, because if you can use the book, you had probably better.
So I wrote on, into the night, drinking cup after cup of coffee while the tea-drinkers got a good night’s sleep.
I was okay for my first 12 cups. But finally, at cup No. 13, something went twang!
And my entire body felt like a giant guitar string that somebody had just plucked. All of a sudden, I was crazier than the kid next to me, who was trying to speed-read James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”
I finished that exam paper, somehow, then walked around, wide-awake and useless, for the next 24 hours.
But unless you’re a crazy kid in college, the bottom line is that coffee is more delicious, more useful, and more inspiring of ideas than any cup of tea.
If only it weren’t so darned good for you, it would be perfect.
