by Kim Pederson…….

Joe, dirt, mud, java, brew, cuppa, go juice, jitter juice, bean juice, brain juice. By whatever name, much of the world runs on coffee and not all of it Dunkin Donuts. But how many of us have ever paused, difficult when caffeinated I know, to wonder what the heck is in it. Not me certainly. Not until this moment, that is.

Thanks primarily to the caffeine it contains, coffee is a psychoactive drug, which means it alters brain function and causes changes in perception, mood, or consciousness (the latter being the most important in my case as in going from being asleep to being awake). Besides caffeine, though, coffee may contain as many as 1,500 chemical substances. These include minerals, trigonelline (which becomes a good source of niacin (B3) while helping prevent tooth decay), lipids, aliphatic acids, oligosaccharides, and proteins.

The lesson here, if there needs to be one, is that nothing is ever as simple as it looks. When people think of coffee, they think of caffeine and not the 1,499 other components that may be in it. They also probably don’t think about the health effects, as in the aforementioned vitamin and dental perks (ha!), plus the reduced risk of type II diabetes and the extra years added to our lives from drinking it.

So next time you glance down at your coffee, whatever form it comes in, or next time you look at anything or anyone for that matter, pause a moment and repeat these words: “Alas, poor Starbucks (or who or whatever). I hardly know it, Horatio.” If the person across from you wonders why you are suddenly addressing him or her as Horatio, just ignore their perplexed look and say “even so it (or he or she) is a thing of infinite jest, is it not? Of most excellent fancy, don’t you agree?” At which point, they will likely nod and concur in a soothing voice as they reach out and gently slide the cup of joe-dirt-mud-java, etc. somewhere safely out of your reach.

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Visit Kim Pederson’s blog RatBlurt: Mostly Random Short-Attention-Span Musings.