Hello, my name is Mike. I’m here because I’m a Starbucks addict.
I can’t really say I’m recovering, because the truth is, I love my addiction. I love going to Starbucks for my grande vanilla nonfat latte, whose $3.73 price tag got affixed to my daily budget long ago.
As you know, I’m hardly alone. Millions of Americans have latched onto Starbucks. It has become to coffee-drinking adults what McDonald’s is to kids. Millions of people would now much rather linger over a latte than belly up to a bar, and to me, that’s a good thing.
But is it too much of a good thing? Studies about caffeine are almost laughable, they’re so all over the map. Some say coffee does wonderful things to your body – fights cancer, reduces the risk of gallstones, improves mental acuity – while others call coffee a deceptive, dangerous elixir. The more critical studies even say it can lead to cancer and heart attacks, not to mention insomnia and heartburn. Either way, the numbers are astounding.
Starbucks reports that 12 percent of its U.S. customers visit a store more than four times a week. The Seattle-based company says its fiercely loyal patrons consume 400 billion cups of coffee a year at more than 10,000 stores around the globe.
Starbucks defines “a typical user” as someone showing up at least 18 times a month, which is all the more amazing, since, as you know, you can brew coffee at home.
“I go there three to four times a day,” says banker Mike Mayo, 52. “I order just plain old coffee, but I’m addicted to it. I spend at least $3 to $4 a day, times five, which is $20 a week,” he says. “I spend anywhere between $80 and $100 a month on coffee … I know it can’t be good for me, but what the hell.”
But Amy Carenza Offerdahl, 25, contends it is good for her. She sees coffee as a rich antioxidant, a valuable tool in the fight against cancer. She loves her morning fix, which she concedes comes with a cost.
“In our business,” says Offerdahl, who also works for a bank, “what financial advisers used to call the cigarette factor is now ‘the latte factor.’ They used to say, ‘If you were to save what you’re spending on cigarettes …’ Now they say, ‘If you were to save what you’re spending on lattes. …”‘ Whether spending or sipping, Offerdahl admits she’s hooked.
So why is Starbucks so addictive? Is it caffeine alone that keeps us coming back? Paul Groshko, regional director for Starbucks in North Texas and Oklahoma, says the company revels in “the Starbucks experience,” which only starts with your morning cup.
Dallas lawyer Paul Amiel, 54, loves the smell and taste of coffee and how it “jolts you awake in the morning.” But he, too, craves “the experience.” “You get the same cup, the same look, the same price, the same taste … regardless of where you find it,” says Amiel.
Starbucks has done more than change our collective taste, he says. It’s changed our culture. Whereas it used to be a cigarette break, he says, “now it’s a Starbucks break.”
Just as tobacco is a casualty, so is alcohol. Offerdahl contends that Starbucks has begun to replace the corner bar for happy hour.
Is all of that caffeine good for us? In 2004, The Wall Street Journal commissioned a study that found there’s 56 percent more caffeine in Starbucks coffee than there is in 7-Eleven coffee.
Caffeine is a stimulant to the central nervous system that occurs naturally in 63 plants. Some researchers say it has the power of blocking adenosine, a chemical that slows brain activity. By stimulating brain activity, caffeine increases alertness, improves motor skills and speeds up thought processes. According to the Merchants of Green Coffee, a group that imports arabica beans, studies have attempted to implicate caffeine in heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, cancer and birth defects.
But, says the organization, “the results of these studies have been largely inconclusive and, in some cases, contradictory.”
Whether coffee is very good or very bad for you depends on which study you quote.
There are, of course, plenty of “cons,” such as the National Institutes of Health saying that “heavy” caffeine intake (five or more cups of coffee a day) may interfere with calcium absorption.
A study by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine says that drinking unfiltered coffee may increase your cholesterol level.
And the New England Journal of Medicine says pregnant women who drink six cups of coffee a day have an increased risk of miscarriage.
On the positive side, a study by the University of California at Davis says coffee consumed within 10 minutes of brewing “may contain the same amount of antioxidants as three oranges.”
Dr. Robert W. Greene, professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, has spent years studying the effects of caffeine on the brain’s fatigue factor, adenosine, and concludes that coffee works by blocking adenosine and, accordingly, the adenosine-mediated symptoms of fatigue.
Does that mean he’s issuing a blanket endorsement of all that coffee you’re guzzling? Not exactly. Like most doctors, he recommends common sense and moderation: If you suffer from a heart condition or seizures or chronic heartburn or you’re at risk for having a stroke, he says you should drink no coffee or carefully restrict your use.
But coffee does many good things. “It can be a neuro-protective against Parkinson’s disease,” he says. “That’s just one of the neuro-degenerative disorders that caffeine protects against.” Caffeine, he says, “is the world’s best-known antagonist for mental fatigue,” which is also why people drink too much of it and, yes, even get addicted to it.
