John's Reviews > Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts, and Hooks Us

This was good. It also made me feel a little stupid. I always took caffeine for granted, not just in coffee and tea, but in soda too. I figured Coke and Pepsi had caffeine because they just did, colas just had caffeine. The fact that this did not explain why Mountain Dew, or Sunkist, also had caffeine did not occur to me.
But of course, these sodas actually have caffeine because the companies mix in caffeine powder - they control the amount of caffeine you get. And that leads to the other thing I didn't know, which according to Carpenter, lots of people don't know - where that caffeine comes from. He writes that when they bother to think about it, most people figure that extra caffeine comes from the decaffeination process for coffee and tea. And some does. But most comes from big factories in China that synthesize caffeine.
There was a lot of fascinating information in here about how caffeine affects one's body. It was a good time-waster, especially if you are a big coffee swiller like me. It did not make me want to swear off coffee, but it did confirm me in my desire to avoid those creepy energy drinks. I will drink my coffee and tea thank you. And sometimes Coke.