I recently learned that chocolate contain significant amount of coffeine. 100g chocolate contain roughly as much as a cup of black tea. As a result I updated in the direction of not eating chocolate directly before going to bed.
I don’t know whether the information is new to everyone, but it was interesting for me.
Caffeine’s a strong drug for me, except I have a huge tolerance now because I consume so much coffee. One night a few years ago, after I had quit caffeine for about a month, I was picking away at a bag of chocolate almonds while doing homework, and after a few hours I noticed that I felt pretty much euphoric. So yeah, this is good info to have if you’re trying to get off caffeine.
FWIW, I did some reading of studies and it seems that kinds of tea vary too much in caffeine content for classifying by preparation method to be a meaningful indication of caffeine content, and there’s some question about how l-theanine plays a role. It’s probably better to say ‘a cup of tea’.
Anecdotally, I know a person who drinks a lot of “regular” black tea (Ceylon/Assam), but doesn’t drink Darjeeling tea because it gets her jittery and too-much-caffeine-shaky.
Yeah, that was one of the studies I read on the topic. (The key part is “Caffeine concentrations in white, green, and black teas ranged from 14 to 61 mg per serving (6 or 8 oz) with no observable trend in caffeine concentration due to the variety of tea.”, although they bought mostly black teas and not many white/green or any oolongs; but the other studies don’t show a clear trend either.)
Did you see any data on natural variability—that is, compare the caffeine content in tea from two different bushes on the same planation; from different plantations (on different soils, different altitude, etc.)?
What makes tea white/green/oolong/black is just post-harvest thermal processing and it seems likely that the caffeine content is determined at the plant level.
Did you see any data on natural variability—that is, compare the caffeine content in tea from two different bushes on the same planation; from different plantations (on different soils, different altitude, etc.)?
Don’t think so. It’d be a good study to run, but a bit challenging: even if you buy from a specific plantation, I think they tend to blend or mix leaves from various bushes, so getting the leaves would be more of a challenge than normal.
What makes tea white/green/oolong/black is just post-harvest thermal processing and it seems likely that the caffeine content is determined at the plant level.
I thought that they were also usually harvested at different times through the year?
I thought that they were also usually harvested at different times through the year?
You mean that tea intended to become, say, white, is harvested at different time than tea intended to become black? I don’t think that’s the case. As far as I know the major difference is what you harvest, but that expresses itself as quality of the tea, not whether it is white or oolong or black. For the top teas you harvest the bud at the tip of the branch and one or two immature leaves next to it (which often look silverish because of fine hairs on these leaves), such teas are known as “tippy”. Cheaper teas harvest full-grown leaves. There might well be the difference in caffeine content between the two, but it’s not a green/black difference, it’s a good tea vs lousy tea difference.
Darjeeling is unusual in that it has two specific harvesting seasons (called “first flush” and “second flush”) but both are used to make black (well, kinda-black) tea.
White tea is harvested early and immature. Black/oolong/green is a matter of post-processing.
Can you provide a link for that assertion? The post-harvesting processing of white tea is quite different from that of green, not to mention black. Also, I believe that while white tea requires top-quality leaves (the bud + 1-2 young leaves) and other teas don’t, the top quality greens, oolongs, and blacks use the same “immature” leaves as white.
The average difference between different cups of tea are probably greater than the differences between different kinds of black tea. I don’t see how using a wider category is helpful for giving people an idea about how much caffeine a bar of chocolate happens to have.
A cup of black tea is an amount that the average person wouldn’t drink right before bed. If you have a better metric for given people a meaningful idea about the amount of caffeine in chocolate feel free to suggest one.
100g of pure chocolate is a lot. I normally eat 25g of 85% chocolate. That’s probably an upper bound on a typical serving, diluted by other ingredients. For people who do not otherwise consume caffeine, it’s a powerful dose, but for people who drink coffee every morning, it’s probably not much.
Added: 25g of pure chocolate has about 10mg of caffeine, about the same as 25g of liquid coffee.
I recently learned that chocolate contain significant amount of coffeine. 100g chocolate contain roughly as much as a cup of black tea. As a result I updated in the direction of not eating chocolate directly before going to bed.
I don’t know whether the information is new to everyone, but it was interesting for me.
Caffeine’s a strong drug for me, except I have a huge tolerance now because I consume so much coffee. One night a few years ago, after I had quit caffeine for about a month, I was picking away at a bag of chocolate almonds while doing homework, and after a few hours I noticed that I felt pretty much euphoric. So yeah, this is good info to have if you’re trying to get off caffeine.
Besides caffeine, there’s also theobromine.
FWIW, I did some reading of studies and it seems that kinds of tea vary too much in caffeine content for classifying by preparation method to be a meaningful indication of caffeine content, and there’s some question about how l-theanine plays a role. It’s probably better to say ‘a cup of tea’.
Here is some data on tea caffeine content.
Anecdotally, I know a person who drinks a lot of “regular” black tea (Ceylon/Assam), but doesn’t drink Darjeeling tea because it gets her jittery and too-much-caffeine-shaky.
Yeah, that was one of the studies I read on the topic. (The key part is “Caffeine concentrations in white, green, and black teas ranged from 14 to 61 mg per serving (6 or 8 oz) with no observable trend in caffeine concentration due to the variety of tea.”, although they bought mostly black teas and not many white/green or any oolongs; but the other studies don’t show a clear trend either.)
Did you see any data on natural variability—that is, compare the caffeine content in tea from two different bushes on the same planation; from different plantations (on different soils, different altitude, etc.)?
What makes tea white/green/oolong/black is just post-harvest thermal processing and it seems likely that the caffeine content is determined at the plant level.
Don’t think so. It’d be a good study to run, but a bit challenging: even if you buy from a specific plantation, I think they tend to blend or mix leaves from various bushes, so getting the leaves would be more of a challenge than normal.
I thought that they were also usually harvested at different times through the year?
You mean that tea intended to become, say, white, is harvested at different time than tea intended to become black? I don’t think that’s the case. As far as I know the major difference is what you harvest, but that expresses itself as quality of the tea, not whether it is white or oolong or black. For the top teas you harvest the bud at the tip of the branch and one or two immature leaves next to it (which often look silverish because of fine hairs on these leaves), such teas are known as “tippy”. Cheaper teas harvest full-grown leaves. There might well be the difference in caffeine content between the two, but it’s not a green/black difference, it’s a good tea vs lousy tea difference.
Darjeeling is unusual in that it has two specific harvesting seasons (called “first flush” and “second flush”) but both are used to make black (well, kinda-black) tea.
White tea is harvested early and immature. Black/oolong/green is a matter of post-processing.
White tea has huge variance in caffeine across varieties. Both tails of the distribution are white.
Can you provide a link for that assertion? The post-harvesting processing of white tea is quite different from that of green, not to mention black. Also, I believe that while white tea requires top-quality leaves (the bud + 1-2 young leaves) and other teas don’t, the top quality greens, oolongs, and blacks use the same “immature” leaves as white.
The average difference between different cups of tea are probably greater than the differences between different kinds of black tea. I don’t see how using a wider category is helpful for giving people an idea about how much caffeine a bar of chocolate happens to have.
A cup of black tea is an amount that the average person wouldn’t drink right before bed. If you have a better metric for given people a meaningful idea about the amount of caffeine in chocolate feel free to suggest one.
And I don’t see why you should make distinctions which don’t make a difference, and engage in false precision.
And they would drink a cup of white tea, green tea, or oolong tea right before bed?
I already did: ‘a cup of tea’.
There are various kind of herbal tea that don’t have any coffeine in them and I do drink them before going to bed.
Yes, but people don’t usually mean herbal teas or tisanes when they say ‘tea’.
That depends very much on the people with whom you interact.
Caffeinated tea, then?
100g of pure chocolate is a lot. I normally eat 25g of 85% chocolate. That’s probably an upper bound on a typical serving, diluted by other ingredients. For people who do not otherwise consume caffeine, it’s a powerful dose, but for people who drink coffee every morning, it’s probably not much.
Added: 25g of pure chocolate has about 10mg of caffeine, about the same as 25g of liquid coffee.