{"product_id":"caffeinated-isbn-9780142181805","title":"Caffeinated","description":"\u003cb\u003e“You’ll never think the same way about your morning cup of coffee.”—Mark McClusky, editor in chief of Wired.com and author of \u003ci\u003eFaster, Higher, Stronger\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJournalist Murray Carpenter has been under the influence of a drug for nearly three decades. And he’s in good company, because chances are you’re hooked, too. Humans have used caffeine for thousands of years. A bitter white powder in its most essential form, a tablespoon of it would kill even the most habituated user. This addictive, largely unregulated substance is everywhere—in places you’d expect (like coffee and chocolate) and places you wouldn’t (like chewing gum and fruit juice), and Carpenter reveals its impact on soldiers, athletes, and even children. It can make you stronger, faster, and more alert, but it’s not perfect, and its role in health concerns like obesity and anxiety will surprise you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMaking stops at the coffee farms of central Guatemala, a synthetic caffeine factory in China, and an energy shot bottler in New Jersey, among numerous other locales around the globe, \u003ci\u003eCaffeinated\u003c\/i\u003e exposes the high-stakes but murky world of caffeine, drawing on cutting-edge science and larger-than-life characters to offer an unprecedented understanding of America’s favorite drug. | \"A fascinating, often disturbing look at America's favorite recreational drug.  The book is another reminder that some people will do just about anything to make money—at the expense of our health.\"—\u003cb\u003eEric Schlosser, author of \u003ci\u003eFast Food Nation \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eCommand and Control\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \"In his quest to understand our unique relationship with caffeine, Murray Carpenter leads us on a romp through history and tours of Colombian coffee fields, Chinese tea lounges, and a factory that pumps out synthetic caffeine for soft drinks.\"—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eMother Jones\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"The book is anything but preachy, yet along with acknowledging caffeine's benefits, Carpenter bluntly addresses its dangers, which can include anxiety, panic attacks, disrupted sleep and, if taken in large doses, even death.\u003ci\u003e Caffeinated\u003c\/i\u003e highlights not just the physiological downsides of caffeine but the problems that regulators face in trying to curb what he calls 'an industry running wild.\"\u003ci\u003e—\u003cb\u003eScientific American\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"A tenaciously researched look into the physiology, psychology and commerce of caffeine.\"—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eNew York Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I don’t even drink coffee, but I found \u003ci\u003eCaffeinated\u003c\/i\u003e enlivening, with just the right overtones of sweet and bitter. Weaving together history, law and science, Carpenter makes a compelling case that most of us are addicted to a brilliantly marketed drug disguised as a mellow morning ritual. Fascinating, disturbing, to be savored.”—\u003cb\u003eFlorence Williams, author of \u003ci\u003eBreasts\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"As Murray Carpenter makes clear in his methodical review, our society's metrics are no match for this substance's nuances, whether among athletes, teenagers, experimental subjects or the average dependent Joe.\"—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Riding a buzz clearly generated by its subject, Murray Carpenter's \u003ci\u003eCaffeinated \u003c\/i\u003etakes readers around the world on a journey that brings humanity's favorite drug to life, in all its glory and grime. You'll never think the same way about your morning cup of coffee again.”\u003cb\u003e—Mark McClusky, author of \u003ci\u003eFaster, Higher, Stronger \u003c\/i\u003eand editor in chief, Wired.com\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Carpenter sheds new light on an old standby.”—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eBangor Daily News\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A surprising exposé of the 'caffeine industrial complex,' the industry that markets this substance in every form it can. This book compellingly argues that the health hazards of excessive caffeine intake need more attention and better regulation. I’m convinced. You will be too.”—\u003cb\u003eMarion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health, New York University, and author of \u003ci\u003eWhat to Eat\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A readable guide to this ubiquitous but misunderstood substance.\"—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eConcord Monitor\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Carpenter's entertaining narrative dissects caffeine's circuitous route into consumer culture and its tenacious hold on the human mind and body.\"—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"I'm not sure if Murray Carpenter's splendid book, \u003ci\u003eCaffeinated\u003c\/i\u003e, will lead you to drink more coffee, or less. But it will certainly make you think about your next cup of joe (or tea or Red Bull) in new and startling ways. Carpenter makes a mighty mountain out of a milligram, weaving together a story of history, science, lore and slick marketing in ways that offer surprising vistas at every turn.\"—\u003cb\u003eWayne Curtis, author of \u003ci\u003eAnd a Bottle of Rum\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Carpenter…leaves no aspect of caffeine unexplored…[He] offers a glimpse of a world where the science behind the chemical fascinates as much as its history enlightens, its regulation (or lack thereof) startles, and its ubiquity in beverages, foods, and supplements disquiets…Eye-opening.”—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Scientist\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “The world's most popular stimulant now has a book to match. A double espresso shot of java journalism, \u003ci\u003eCaffeinated\u003c\/i\u003e brews up a masterly combination of page-turning narrative with deeply researched history and news. From professional athletes to industry insiders, from the coffee plantations of Colombia to the world's largest, most secretive caffeine manufacturing plant in the hinterlands of China, Carpenter spill the beans on America's drug of choice. More eye-opening than a case of Red Bull!”—\u003cb\u003eDan Hurley, author of \u003ci\u003eSmarter\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003eCaffeinated \u003c\/i\u003emight be more of a jolt than your morning cup.”—\u003cb\u003eExaminer.com\u003c\/b\u003e | \u003cb\u003eMurray Carpenter \u003c\/b\u003ehas reported caffeine-related stories for the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eWired\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eNational Geographic\u003c\/i\u003e, NPR, and PRI’s \u003ci\u003eThe World\u003c\/i\u003e. He has also written for the \u003ci\u003eBoston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eChristian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e, and other media outlets. He holds a degree in psychology from the University of Colorado and a master of science in environmental studies from the University of Montana, and has worked as a medical lab assistant in Ohio, a cowboy in Colombia, a farmhand in Virginia, and an oil-exploring “juggie” in Wyoming. He lives in Belfast, Maine. | Chapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Cradle of Caffeine Culture\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe pyramids at izapa were not as spectacular as I had expected. They are low, stone- sided mounds of earth rising beside the main highway to Mexico City, a dozen miles outside of Tapachula, Chiapas. Diesel-spewing buses passed, stirring the plastic detritus at the roadside. A few sad roadhouses tried to capitalize on the location, but business was slow. A local family served as caretakers, selling Cokes and postcards from their porch and charging a small fee to wander the ruins. Roosters crowed from the nearby houses, pigs ambled down a dirt road, and as evening fell, the surrounding woods were full of bird- song.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCalled the Soconusco region, this low, flat coastal plain along the Pacific Ocean is torrid—sweltering and rainy. The Soconusco is the birthplace of chocolate culture. The shaded lower tier of the woods that envelop the clearing, which is no more than five acres, is full of cacao trees, just as it has been for much of the past three thousand years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe people who built these pyramids came after the Olmec and before the Maya. They were so unique that their culture is called Iza- pan, after this, the best known of their sites. In addition to ancient ball courts and public plazas—like the one at the center of this site—they left behind this tradition of cacao (pronounced kuh-cow). Farmers have been planting and nurturing cacao trees here ever since. This is the tree that grows the bean that gives us chocolate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn archaeological dig at the nearby Paso de la Amada turned up traces of chocolate more than thirty-five hundred years old. This is the earliest evidence of the human use of chocolate, which in itself is kind of cool, but it’s more than that. It is also the earliest documented human use of caffeine. So far, no place on the planet can claim longer continuous caffeine use.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is tempting to think of chocolate as a modern luxury, an indul- gence of self- proclaimed chocoholics. But even the most devoted of today’s chocolate lovers have nothing on the Izapans, Mayans, and Aztecs. They really loved their chocolate. They used it ceremonially, in rituals that sometimes included human sacrifice. They drank it spiked with chili and used special pitchers decorated with fierce faces to pour it from high above the cup, giving the chocolate a frothy head. They even used the little cacao beans as currency. The Aztecs rationed it to their soldiers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuring colonization, when chocolate became popular among the courts of Europe, Soconusco chocolate was a favorite among royal chocolate freaks like Cosimo III, the Grand Duke of Tuscany. In 1590, not long after chocolate made its way to Spain and Italy, a Jesuit au- thor noted that the Spanish, and especially the women, were addicted to it. Later, the coffee- and chocolate-loving libertine the Marquis de Sade did much to bolster chocolate’s long-rumored (but unproven) reputation for aphrodisiac qualities.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnother indication of chocolate’s lofty reputation in Europe was the name bestowed upon it by Carl Linnaeus, the eighteenth-century Swedish botanist who developed the binomial system for identifying species. His name for the tree was \u003ci\u003eTheobroma cacao\u003c\/i\u003e. The latter came from the Mayan word for the tree; the former, taken from Greek, means “food of the gods.” (Theobromine, an alkaloid very similar to caffeine, later took its name from the tree; it is far more abundant in chocolate than in caffeine, but it has minimal stimulant effects.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSure, chocolate tastes great. But “food of the gods”? A beverage to drink in concert with human sacrifice? A commodity so valuable that it stood in lieu of gold for money? It is hard to imagine exactly what caused this chocolate lust . . . unless we think about the caffeine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese days, we don’t consider chocolate as a primary source of caffeine, but it would have been a big part of the attraction for the Izapans, and even the pre-coffee Spaniards.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe can’t know exactly how much caffeine was contained in the historic cacao drinks, but an analysis of modern chocolate gives some perspective. A Scharffen Berger 82 percent cacao extra-dark chocolate bar has forty-two milligrams of caffeine per forty-three-gram serving (the same size as a standard Hershey bar). That equals roughly a mil- ligram of caffeine per gram of chocolate. If the Izapans made drinks with seventy-five grams of cacao, they would have delivered about a SCAD, the kick of a Red Bull or a single shot of espresso. For anyone not habituated to daily caffeine use, that is a good, solid bump.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne of the reasons we no longer think of chocolate as a primary source of caffeine is that it has been so dramatically adulterated and diluted. A Hershey’s milk chocolate bar— forty-three grams—has but nine milligrams of caffeine. Hershey, like most mass-market chocolate makers, skates close to the edge of FDA regulations, which require that milk chocolate include a minimum of 10 percent chocolate liquor. (On nomenclature: Cacao, or chocolate liquor, is the pure product of the bean; cocoa is the dried, processed cacao, with the fatty cocoa but- ter removed; chocolate is the product we commonly consume, which can range from strong dark chocolate to dilute milk chocolate.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo understand why chugging down a cold, frothy, unsweetened cacao drink might have appealed to an Izapan ruler (chocolate was then scarce enough that the plebes could not imbibe), it is helpful to understand what happens when we drink caffeinated beverages, whether they’re made from cacao or coffee or tea:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSet your stopwatch. Once the liquid hits your stomach, you have about twenty minutes until that gentle buzz hits your brain. Caffeine is unusually mobile in the body. A small molecule, it easily hurdles the blood-brain barrier. In the synaptic stew of our crania, the molecule blocks the uptake of a neurotransmitter called adenosine (pronounced uh-den- uh-seen). Adenosine tells the brain we are drowsy, but caffeine does not let the brain get the message. It is this simple trick, elbowing adenosine off the barstool and sitting in its place, that makes caffeine America’s favorite drug.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd it is not just hitting your brain. Caffeine has a number of sig- nificant, but sometimes contradictory, effects on your physiology. It stimulates your central nervous system. Your alertness increases, your reaction time decreases, and your focus sharpens. Your blood pressure will increase slightly. Your heart may race (but may, in habitual users, actually slow). And in your brain, despite your increased acuity, blood flow will decrease. (It is the inverse of this, the increased blood flow to expanding capillaries, that gives so many caffeine junkies the pound- ing withdrawal headaches we so dread.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOnce the caffeine locks in on those adenosine receptors, things look rosy; no is task insurmountable. Breaths come easily and deep. You feel so good, how about one more shot of that magical elixir?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOr not. That “sweet spot,” the zone where physical and mental perfor- mance is optimal, is not wide, and it is easy to blast right on past. Caffeine researcher Scott Killgore told me that caffeine does more than just block adenosine. It has a variety of effects on the mind and body. “At higher doses it can lead to alterations in your heart rhythm. So you can start to have increased heart rate, or tachycardia. . . . So you start to notice that your heart feels like it’s pounding very hard or very quickly or maybe skips a beat. And that’s a clear indication that you are probably taking too much caffeine in your diet and you need to slow down,” he said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnother clue to excessive caffeine use is a bad mood. “It can make you irritable,” said Killgore, “make you more likely to respond in an irritable way to people.” Confusing matters, irritability can also be a symptom of caffeine withdrawal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut these days it is hard to take too much caffeine from chocolate. Because it’s become so diluted and other caffeine delivery mechanisms so much more popular, a recent analysis showed that chocolate ac- counts for just 2.3 milligrams of Americans’ daily caffeine consump- tion (about 1 percent of our total caffeine intake).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the Izapan era, cacao was the only caffeine in town. The hot, wet region was perfect for its cultivation. The demand for cacao was so great that historians surmise it was the reason for Izapa’s wealth. Today’s Izapan cacao groves are not farms in the traditional Western sense. They are managed agroforestry ecosystems bearing multiple crops—from the tall avocado and mamey trees in the canopy down to the cacao growing in the shade near the forest floor. It is an ancient form of agriculture, and one that is now under siege.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEarly one bright, fresh morning in Tapachula, I met Rubiel Velas- quez Toledo at Red Maya CASFA, an organic growers’ cooperative. We were heading out for a tour of cacao country.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI had eaten a light breakfast at the hotel—fresh rolls, a fruit salad made with local mango, papaya, pineapple, and banana, and a couple of cups of café con leche. But out on the highway, Velasquez suggested a bit more sustenance and a taste of local cacao culture.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe pulled his battered Ford pickup over at a roadside stand with a clean cement floor, metal roof, and open sides. Two women stood at the ready, selling the cacao-based drink pozol.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePozol is an ancient blend, a mixture of cacao and fermented, coarsely ground corn. To prep the drinks, the women rolled the corn and cacao into balls a bit smaller than a baseball. They placed these into a cup with water, used a broad wooden spoon to vigorously blend it, added a dipper of viscous cane sugar, then added ice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAbout the color of a chocolate milk shake, pozol has a thick, rich texture, the cacao velvety on the tongue. Velasquez said the hearty drinks are popular with laborers, because the sustenance from the corn and cacao combined with the kick from the caffeine ensures that you don’t have to eat again until evening. All of this for eight pesos— about sixty cents.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is not the only cacao-and-corn drink in the region. Janine Gasco, a California anthropologist and an expert on Soconusco cacao culture, gave me some background before my travels and told me I should also look for tascalate. After some searching, I found it on the menu of a café just off Tapachula’s zocalo, or main square. It is a deli- cious blend of cacao and toasted corn, colored red with the local dye achiote, and served cold. Tascalate feels granular on the tongue, with a bit of a corn tortilla flavor. This might evoke an image of a tortilla chip dipped in milk chocolate, but it tastes nothing like that—both the cacao and the corn are subtle, combining for a rich flavor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith the exception of the sugar, an innovation that came with the European conquest, these drinks are similar to the frothy chocolate so beloved by the Izapans, the Mayans, and the Aztecs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the pozol stand, Velasquez took me rattling down a dirt road between farms near the town of Plan de Ayala. The villages featured thatched-roof huts, chickens, mules, and scrawny dogs sniffing out a living at the dusty roadside.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVelasquez pulled his truck over to point out a traditional cacao grove. It is the sort of tropical forest we can all easily imagine— verdant, full of exotic birdcalls, with all manner of strange reptiles likely hidden in the dank shadows of the understory. Cedar, oak, avo- cado, and mango trees grew high above, shading the cacao growing below.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCacao is a small tree. But it is easy to pick out, even for this amateur naturalist, because its fruits are distinctive—the green, football-shaped pods grow straight out from the trunk. They look like trees\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr. Seuss might have sketched.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVelasquez said this is the traditional, age-old style of cacao farm- ing, in diversified woods with crops at multiple levels. Each layer of the forest produces a cash or food crop—fruit, firewood, or chocolate. But then he pointed to the other side of the road, where a massive field was completely denuded of trees. A new crop of sugarcane was just coming up through the raw dirt. Up until last year, Velasquez said, this was a cacao plantation. Back in the truck, we saw the same story at farm after farm; mile after mile of formerly forested cacao groves had been cleared for not just oil palm and sugarcane but also grains like soy and fruits like papaya. These are massive monocultures, typi- cally owned by foreign agro-biz giants. Once cleared, the land is so raw that even here, with a hundred inches of rain annually, it must be irrigated.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was siesta time when Velasquez and I reached the last stop on our tour of Chiapas cacao country: Chocolates Finos San José, a small- ish operation on a tidy lot.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVelasquez pulled the truck in, but we saw nobody about. He went to the house while I waited in the shade of a thatched-roof pavilion, where a slight breeze made the heat bearable. Roosters crowed in the distance, turkeys clucked, a listless dog lay in the dust, and a shirtless man in khakis and a rope belt snoozed in a hammock ten feet away, his jellies kicked off. I heard the faint strains of a Mexican ballad playing from a nearby house, the chorus a mournful cry answered by a blast of horns.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVelasquez soon returned from the house with Bernardina Cruz, the diminutive \u003ci\u003edueña\u003c\/i\u003e. She looked tired. It turned out she had made a batch of chocolate the night before, a process she can’t start until nearly midnight, when the heat subsides (the chocolate melts at about ninety degrees). In fact, this is one of the secrets to chocolate’s enduring appeal—it is solid at room temperature but melts quickly over the tongue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCruz opened the door to her chocolate factory. It was not until we walked in and I smelled the rich chocolate and began to salivate that I realized I had not eaten anything, nor been a bit hungry, since we had the pozol more than seven hours earlier.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe factory is small: a barrel roaster in one room, a milling ma- chine and a refiner in another. Cruz hand-pours the finished chocolate into molds. It is chocolate production on a human scale. She makes about twenty cases of twenty-four chocolate bars daily, processing four tons a year. Some of the chocolate bars are exported to Italy, some go to Germany, and some stay in Mexico and are sold in Guada- lajara. At a table next to her small glass-front cooler—like a two-door soda refrigerator at a corner store—she gave me samples of her nibs and chocolate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNibs are pieces of roasted chocolate a bit bigger than coarsely ground coffee. Fairly stable in this form, nibs are often shipped as raw ingredients. And they are delicious. Since the cocoa butter has not yet been squeezed out, the crunchy little cacao shards have a hearty, nutty flavor. (Cocoa butter is the most valuable part of the cacao bean; once it is squeezed from the bean, it is often shunted off for use in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI could eat the freshly roasted organic cacao nibs all day. It is hard to imagine how chocolate evolved to such an extent that most of us are unfamiliar with these nutty, caffeine-rich nibs, knowing only the pale shadow that is modern milk chocolate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor years, some claimed the Soconusco region was more than the birthplace of chocolate culture, that it was also the ancestral home of the cacao plant. But USDA researchers showed genetic evidence that cacao was first domesticated in the Upper Amazon. Their published research went even further, refining cacao into ten genetic groups, all present in the small region that is the epicenter of cacao. In their view, cacao was domesticated in what is now northern Peru and southern\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eColombia, likely for its sweet fruit, which was used to make beer (the bean itself was not then the object of desire), and then carried north thousands of years ago to the Soconusco. It does seem clear that the Soconusco is where cacao was first used to make chocolate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMars Inc. funded this genetic research. The science is critical to the global chocolate industry. West Africa now produces the vast majority of the world’s cacao harvest, which has grown quickly—it totaled 4.73 million tons in 2011. The world’s cacao harvest has more than tripled since 1960, with Africa accounting for most of the growth. African nations produce six times as much cacao as all the countries in the Americas combined; the Ivory Coast alone produces three times as much. (The African cacao industry owes some of its productivity to child labor, and advocates have prodded Hershey and Nestlé to more effectively fight the practice.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwo devastating cacao fungi—frosty pod rot and the witches’ broom that recently wiped out Brazil’s cacao industry—have not yet reached Africa. But diseases endemic to other African plants have found cacao to be a good host and could someday wreak havoc on New World crops. Meanwhile, frosty pod rot has reached Chiapas, further threatening the historic cacao groves near Izapa.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe evening after touring cacao country with Velasquez, I was cooling my heels at the International Fair of Tapachula. Sipping a coffee granita, a pound of local chocolate in my backpack, I finally had time to read the paper. The lead story was the Chiapas governor’s effort to prop up an eco-friendly business. Cacao, you might think? No, palm oil, produced from plantations of nonnative African oil palms to be exported for biodiesel. Ironically, the Chiapas oil palm displacing the cacao groves is being grown with government support to meet the demand of green-leaning consumers in more prosperous countries.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe environmental benefits of preserving cacao groves are now attracting the interest of conservationists like Edward Millard, who oversees sustainable landscapes for the Rainforest Alliance. Millard works from London, but when I finally pinned him down to talk on the phone, he was at a meeting in Costa Rica. He said the alliance is interested in cacao because it is grown on more than seventeen mil- lion acres of land that is important for biodiversity. He said over the past twenty years there has been a move to intensify cacao production at the expense of the environment in places like the Ivory Coast, but he believes there is a trend swinging back toward traditional methods, which he welcomes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“If you can produce a major cash crop like cacao in an understory with a mix of other crops in the same farming system, and all of them together giving you a system to keep your climate healthy, your soils regulated, giving you compost material, et cetera, that’s a pretty via- ble system,” said Millard. To support this practice, the Rainforest Al- liance is now certifying chocolate that is sustainably harvested.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBefore I left Chiapas, I went back to the Tapachula co-op to see Jorge Aguilar Reyna, its executive director. His office was back in a rabbit warren of rooms opening onto a courtyard. Wooden planks made a walkway over the mud, and a thatched-roof structure with open sides that served as a meeting room housed a long table. Above the table were a large map of the cacao-producing areas, results of cacao taste tests pinned to a sheet of plywood, and a painting of the Virgin Mary.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAguilar told me he wants to see Americans buying not just Soco- nusco chocolate, but any chocolate that has a high percentage of cacao. Much of the finished chocolate from the Soconusco region has 30 to 70 percent cacao, far more than popular American milk chocolate bars. And to replace the displaced cocoa butter, the biggest chocolate com- panies use a castor oil–based emulsifier known as PGPR. Aguilar said it is all part of a “culture of adulteration” that is bad for consumers . . . and bad for cacao farmers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAguilar’s concerns hit close to home. Even along this Pacific Coast of Mesoamerica, the cradle of chocolate culture, the top-shelf candy bars in the stores are made by Hershey.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLeaving Aguilar’s office, I noticed two plastic bags on the corner of his desk: One held green coffee beans; the other was full of dried, un- roasted cacao. Unable to resist, I asked if the cacao could be eaten just like that. Sure, he said. He popped one of the cacao beans into his mouth and passed the bag to me. I grabbed one, chewed it, and found its flavor both slightly nutty and bitter, and delicious.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is not only the oldest known caffeine tradition, but Soconusco chocolate also exemplifies trends that extend across caffeinated prod- ucts, from tea to coffee to caffeine powder. Two tracks are diverging. On one, the gourmet, artisanal, single-source products are getting more attention from foodies and conservation-minded consumers. On the other, mass-market caffeine delivery mechanisms are going gang- busters. The latter track, no surprise, is where the volume is, even if the former is seeing rapid growth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs artisanal, single-origin chocolate becomes more popular, the Soconusco is attracting more attention from American chocolatiers. Askinosie Chocolate, in Missouri, has produced limited runs of choc- olate bars from pure Soconusco cacao, as has Taza Chocolate, in Mas- sachusetts. Cacao-rich dark chocolate bars not only have significantly more caffeine than commercial milk chocolate; they are also bursting with the health-lending antioxidants known as flavonols.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRaw food advocates are even getting into cacao beans, which are developing a reputation as a superfood. Or have developed that repu- tation, I should say. The tenacious German explorer Alexander von Humboldt, who traveled the Americas extensively in the early 1800s (and wrote many volumes about his discoveries), summed it up well: “The cocoa bean is a phenomenon, for nowhere else has nature con- centrated such a wealth of valuable nourishment in so small a space.” As Americans have gravitated toward darker gourmet chocolate bars, Hershey has gotten a piece of the action. It bought two West Coast chocolate makers—Scharffen Berger and Dagoba—shut down their plants, and centralized production in the Midwest (the bars still look homegrown, funky, and noncorporate, and the labels do not men- tion Hershey). Unlike the familiar Hershey’s bars, these do deliver a caffeine kick.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThough its caffeine has often gotten short shrift, chocolate has long had appeal as a metabolically altering substance. In her book about Hershey and Mars, Joël Glenn Brenner writes, “We still speak of chocolate as if speaking of a drug. It is addicting, sinful, wickedly rich. We crave it, overdose on it and suffer from chocolate withdrawal. A ‘fix’ of chocolate can relieve depression and calm anxiety. It provides strength and stamina—the perfect pick-me-up between meals.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBrenner could be describing my roadside pozol. And long before the word \u003ci\u003echocoholics \u003c\/i\u003ecame into vogue, chocolate lovers described the habit, and its stimulating qualities, in terms that sound more familiar to coffee drinkers today.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThomas Gage, the intrepid runaway missionary who traveled through Mexico and Guatemala in the 1600s, wrote detailed accounts of chocolate preparation in his book \u003ci\u003eTravels in the New World\u003c\/i\u003e. It is also interesting to read his account of his own chocolate use: “For myself I must say I used it twelve years constantly, drinking one cup in the morning, another yet before dinner between nine or ten of the clock, another within an hour or after dinner, and another between four and five in the afternoon, and when I was purposed to sit up late to study, I would take another cup about seven or eight at night, which would keep me waking till about midnight.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGage wrote this more than a century before the word \u003ci\u003ecaffeine \u003c\/i\u003ecame into use, but clearly he already knew of its stimulating powers. And the Chinese, thousands of miles across the Pacific, were way ahead of him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 2\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAll the Tea in China\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePetite and reserved, but with an easy smile, Lin Linming invited me to sit down on a wooden chair before a table bearing a tea set neatly cluttered with tea tools.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe used a wooden scoop to fetch some tea from a wicker bin. It was a puer tea, which is an aged tea harvested in 2006 in China’s Yun- nan province. The tray before her, carved of dark wood, is called “the sea of tea.” At the far end is a carved “tea pet,” a figurine that looks like a toad with a smiling Buddha face. Lin’s tea pet is called the Nice Son of the Dragon God.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe heated water in an electric kettle on a low shelf behind her. She poured some into a teapot, of course, but also, ritualistically, into a small bowl full of tea leaves, over the tea pet and the sea of tea, and onto some peanuts as an offering. Then Lin poured tea for me and my companions: my translator, Aida Leng, and Xie Yanchen, a tea expert and editor at \u003ci\u003eBeijing Youth Daily\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe whole process was imbued with ritual, much of it ancient, as tea drinking has evolved in Asia over thousands of years. If the Soconusco can claim the earliest documented use of caffeine, the Chinese can claim the earliest use by folkloric tradition: five thousand years ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy this account, the emperor Shennong was boiling water to drink when some","brand":"Plume","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48338541052133,"sku":"NP9780142181805","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780142181805.jpg?v=1769572599","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/caffeinated-isbn-9780142181805","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}