![]() Taken in moderation, coffee and tea can decrease the risk of several cancers, as well cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, and Parkinson’s disease. He also points out the continuing health benefits attributed to caffeine and confirmed by the science. He notes that before there were ready supplies of potable water, boiled beverages, like coffee or tea, “were the safest thing a person could drink,” with the most commonly available alternative being alcohol. ![]() Then there is the havoc it wreaks on our sleep - particularly the deep, slow-wave sleep that is critical to memory.īut Pollan highlights the positives as well. He concludes that the price has been undeniably high, possibly too high, with its historical connections to a brutal system of production and the back-breaking work involved in growing and harvesting coffee that continues today. In his work, Pollan addresses the question of whether caffeine has been a boon or bane to human civilization. Caffeine written and performed by Michael Pollan.Growers and sellers built the industry on the backs of enslaved people forced to harvest both the coffee beans and the sugar needed to sweeten the bitter drink that had become increasingly popular in the West. As time went on, caffeine’s history took a dark turn. According to the legend, a herder who noticed how jumpy his goats got after eating the berries of an arabica plant gave some of the berries to a local monk, who used them to concoct the world’s first cup of coffee. The discovery of coffee is traced to Ethiopia around 850 A.D. Pollan explains in a section of the audiobook on the substance’s origins that caffeine was first discovered in China around 1000 B.C. Caffeine, one-quarter of which can stay in your system for up to 12 hours, then becomes the solution to the problem it creates, he said, making people who are sleep-deprived from their caffeine consumption the day before eager for a morning hit to charge them up for the day ahead. All the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal were there, he noted, including headaches, fatigue, and perhaps most insidious for a writer trying to tell a compelling story, difficulty concentrating.Īs his work progressed, he also realized that because caffeine is so ubiquitous - more than 90 percent of people on the planet consume it daily, and we even regularly allow children to have the drug in the form of soda - constant personal caffeination “has simply become baseline human consciousness.”ĭuring the talk Pollan delved into the science, discussing how the tiny caffeine molecule acts on the central nervous system by suppressing the neuromodulator adenosine that helps make us sleepy. Pollan said he didn’t fully understand how addicted he was to the drug - also known by its scientific name: 1, 3, 7-trimethylxanthine - until he got off it. The fog settled over me and would not budge.” In his book Pollan recounts the day he finally decided to forgo his routine morning cup, recalling how the “lovely dispersal of the mental fog that the first hit of caffeine ushers into consciousness never arrived. He said his story’s narrative “demanded it.” Yet, as anyone who has dropped the stimulant from their diet knows, it wasn’t easy. Crafting a piece on caffeine had long been on his to-do list, he said, but he was unaware it would require a precious sacrifice.Īs he has done in his earlier work, Pollan became a human test subject for his art, giving up coffee, or more specifically, caffeine, while he worked on the new book in order to truly appreciate its effects on the human body and mind. Pollan, who worked on his psychedelics book while a Radcliffe fellow, said he has been obsessed with “this reciprocal relationship we have with plants” and with certain plants’ ability “to change the textures of our experiences of the world” for years. He discussed his latest effort with Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin during a Tuesday Zoom talk. Chan Arts Lecturer and Professor of the Practice of Non-Fiction has made a career of writing about how the things we consume affect our lives, our health, and our planet (“The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” “How to Change your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence”). It is the world’s most-used drug, one many of us simply refuse to live without, opting for addiction over the loss of that first, or second, or in some cases third cup that gets us through the day.Īnd now its seductive powers, its dark history, its health benefits, and its harmful side effects are on full display in best-selling author Michael Pollan’s new audiobook “ Caffeine: How Coffee and Tea Created the Modern World.”
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