Oooohh! Another coffee post. Honestly, when I started this blogging effort I secretly felt that while it sounded good in my head, putting coffee in the blog tagline was a bad idea. How much mileage can I get from coffee? I pretty much had to force myself to create the initial post about coffee because I felt like the blog was inauthentic if I didn’t at least have one post reflecting the tagline.
But heavens be praised! Due to the magic that is Google and their all-seeing eye, searching for coffee for that post has caused more coffee articles to show up in my feeds! Awesome! It looks like that tagline won’t be in vain after all…
So… more coffee! And to get everyone in the mood, let’s reference one of the all-time great skits calling for more of something! So as you watch the following, just imagine that instead of Will Ferrell whaling away on a cowbell he is instead slurping down copious cups of coffee on a jittery caffeine high.
So with that over with – the question to address is: When should one drink coffee?
That is a pretty simple question, right? The answer, obviously, is that you should go grab a cup right now! Even though I don’t know what time you will be reading this – I will still stand behind that assertion. I will go ahead and pause for a few seconds so that you can go grab a fresh cup o’ joe…….. However, in my opinion, coffee is one of those magical foodstuffs that falls into the realm of “Nobody knows if it is good for you”. I mean this seriously. This isn’t a vaccination argument where I can find 1,478,456 articles that vaccinations are good and 2 articles that they are bad. I would lump coffee in with things like red meat and butter. For every article touting the benefits to eating these foods in moderation I can find a roughly equal number calling out the ill effects that they can have on someone. This doesn’t even take into account the environmental costs of producing food that is animal based instead of plant based. Coffee fits right in here. It’s good for you. It isn’t. A couple of cups a day won’t hurt. Don’t drink 47 cups. Antioxidants good. Caffeine bad.
You may have already made up your mind about coffee. That is totally fine. In fact – my mind is made up as well but for argument’s sake lets keep taking a look here. As I am now distracted trying to determine if coffee is good or bad, let’s conduct a totally unscientific poll. I am going to perform 2 google queries. The first will be the query term: ” is coffee bad for you” and the second will be for “is coffee good for you”. I will look at each article ad using my own totally unbiased opinions will evaluate each article/link to see how many are pro-coffee and how many are anti-coffee. The results are as follows:
From the 10 results to the query “is coffee good for you” I have found the following:
- 7 results were overall positive in regards to coffee. On top of this pretty much all articles did get into the pros and cons and attempted to identify negatives around this habit
- 2 results were overall negative in regards to coffee and were attempts to persuade people to stop drinking coffee
- 1 results was unclear as an ad hijacked the link and I was unable to get back to the actual page to read it
From the 10 results to the query “is coffee bad for you” I have found the following:
- all 10* results were overall positive in regards to coffee.
*it should be noted that this query produced 5 results that were identical articles/links to the “good query”
While this does appear to point to an overall generally positive outlook on coffee with many of these articles citing various scientific studies and other research, there was quite a bit of caution expressed in the articles and there were some potential negatives expressed in every positive article. As I am not trying to change opinion here, I will leave it at that. If you are curious as I was I suggest that you do your own research and form your own opinions on this topic.
Now, if you haven’t already realized, I got distracted here as the question being asked is not whether coffee is good or bad for you – if you choose not to drink it then why are you reading this post? Instead, the question is in regards to when is the right time to drink coffee? Socially, the #1 time seems to be first thing in the morning. However, the reason this topic has come up is the following article: The 2 Best Times to Drink Coffee (One is Likely Right Now)
This article states that through scientific reasoning, the best time to maximize the effectiveness of your first cup of coffee is ~5 hours after you wake up. The reason for this is that your body naturally releases hormones when you wake up to get you up and moving and those hormones start dropping off after this time period. Therefore, a cup o’ joe around this time provides the maximum benefit in terms of what the author calls an “energy bridge” between these energy spikes. Another time that a max boost would occur is after lunch, although the author doesn’t provide a time frame here it is inferred that the same flagging of energy occurs which I am assuming is after the energy spike from food starts fading out.
In a little bit of a counter-intuitive argument, the author also makes a strong case for both naps midday and to drink a cup of coffee prior to the nap. Really? People use coffee to stay awake, so at first glance this definitely seems off. However, the argument here is that it usually takes 20-25 minutes for the caffeine in coffee to enter your bloodstream and start to affect things, so drinking a cup before a power nap that clears and focuses your brain provides a double whammy when you wake up in terms of both a clearer head and an energy boost from the caffeine.
All of this is great info except for one fact – I am guess that the majority of you out there don’t approach coffee like a tool to use to help us focus and be the best that we can be. We drink it because we like it, because it is a habit, or because it is just there. While these tips are nice, the article would probably be better with a title along the lines of: “The Best Times to Drink Coffee If You Want The Biggest Boost From That Coffee”.
As for me? The best time to drink coffee is anytime! I drink it in the morning, in the afternoon, and when we have friends over we usually throw on a pot after dinner and drinks to help settle down after a fun evening. The best time to drink coffee is whenever you feel like it! I would stand by that statement and provide more arguments, except my cup is now empty again and I am going to go fill it up. Drink up and enjoy!
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