Having trouble sleeping after a harmless cup of green tea?

Dark chocolate keeps you awake more than coffee?

A shot of espresso or a cup of brewed coffee to make you finish that project?

Caffeine is the most consumed psychoactive drug in the world. Whether it’s to cope with a sleepless night or to improve physical endurance during sports, caffeine is a stimulant desired for different reasons, but for the same result: energy stimulation. Caffeine achieves this effect by preventing our body from responding to signals that tell it to slow down or de-stimulate. The increased energy and alertness come from the signals of fatigue being blocked and not being transmitted to the brain. The body is objectively fatigued, but the brain doesn’t realize it, so it keeps things run normally (on high levels of dopamine) until the effect of caffeine runs out and we crash all of a sudden.

You’ll be surprised to know that this magical stimulant has a totally different purpose in nature. Plants produce caffeine as some sort of pesticide to keep herbivore insects away and prevent them from eating their leaves and flowers. Lucky us, caffeine is not as toxic on the human body. Found in 60 plant species, the most popular “caffeinated” edible ingredients are coffee beans, tea leaves and cocoa beans. This is why coffee, tea and chocolate are known as stimulating drinks and foods. However, the effects of caffeine depend on which one of the three you choose.

It turns out that caffeine in coffee, tea and chocolate couldn’t act more differently. Even if you are used to coffee, you might still feel strong effects from tea. Or an avid tea lover can experience different reactions from the caffeine in dark chocolate.

Let’s see the different caffeine effects in each one of them.

CAFFEINE CONTENT IN COFFEE, TEA AND CHOCOLATE

For coffee and tea, the caffeine content will vary widely depending on the origin, type, and preparation of the drink. For example, do you know that tea leaves naturally contain more caffeine than coffee beans?

But because coffee is brewed at higher temperatures than tea, then coffee brewing extracts more caffeine compared to tea brewing. You also use a higher amount of coffee beans to make a cup of coffee than tea leaves to make that same amount of tea. So by increasing the quantity of the raw material, you therefore increase the caffeine concentration. Water temperature, brewing time and quantity seem to be even more important than the type of tea or coffee. For example, it is mistakenly believed that black tea has more caffeine than green and white tea because it’s oxidized. No, it doesn’t. Its required longer brewing time makes black tea more caffeinated. There is however the case of Robusta coffee having double the caffeine content of Arabica coffee even in its raw state.

For chocolate, the caffeine content varies depending on even more factors. Some of these start at origin: a research conducted on over 200 cacao samples collected from all over the world found significantly different caffeine levels in cacao from different countries, with Ecuador, Venezuela and Peru producing the “most caffeinated” cacao, and West Africa the least caffeinated. Harvest season also affects the content of caffeine in the beans, while the bean-to-bar process doesn’t seem to alter it. From a consumer perspective, it’s useful to know that caffeine naturally occurs ONLY in cocoa solids. So the darker the chocolate, the higher the content of cocoa solids, and the higher the caffeine content (with white chocolate having 0 caffeine).

Finding exact numbers of caffeine content is a hard task, since also official sources seem to contrast with one another. For the sake of simplicity, we can say that coffee wins the first place, followed by (brewed) tea and then dark chocolate (even at the highest cocoa percentages).

However, caffeine is not the sole responsible for our increased alertness after consuming coffee, chocolate or tea. It is usually accompanied by other stimulants (theobromine in chocolate and theanine in tea), creating synergies that have different effects on our bodies and minds.

CAFFEINE AND COFFEE

Caffeine is the principal active compound in coffee, and the one that gave its name to such a popular and vastly consumed beverage.

The effects of caffeine are well-known. On the bright side, it prevents drowsiness, increases alertness and improves cognitive performances. On the dark side, it can create addiction, induce insomnia and cause anxiety. However, effects vary depending on daily quantities and personal tolerance. As already mentioned, it’s not like caffeine brings new energy to the body, but more like it prevents it from feeling tired and fatigued, therefore giving us the illusion of being lively and energetic when we are physically not. If caffeine is fast to produce its desired effects (energizing us within 1 to 2 hours), its disappearance is as sudden, making us feel even more tired when we least expect it.  

CAFFEINE AND TEA

Moment of truth: caffeine and theine are the same thing (or the same molecule to be exact).

“Originally called "theine", caffeine was first discovered in tea in 1827. It was later shown that the "theine" of tea was identical with the caffeine of coffee, and the term "theine" was then dropped.”

What it’s called theine is therefore just to be meant as “the caffeine in tea”. However, it’s the combination of caffeine with other substances in tea that creates different effects from the caffeine in coffee. The oxidized polyphenols, the thearubigin tannins and the L-theanine amino acid contrast the negative effects of the caffeine. Thanks to them, the theine is spread slowly and continuously through the body in the span of 6 to 8 hours, delivering the cognitive enhancement and alertness from the caffeine, but in a relaxing and calm state far from the anxiety and jitteriness often experienced when consuming coffee.

So if the caffeine from coffee gives us a burst of energy within 1 to 2 hours, sometimes almost creating a “frenetic energy”, the caffeine in tea (softened by the other natural substances) offers a more peaceful, slower and long-lasting stimulation more similar to a “calming energy”.

CAFFEINE AND CHOCOLATE

That piece of dark chocolate in the middle of an office day just hits the spot. You feel energized and credit the caffeine. But the caffeine content in dark chocolate is actually extremely limited, especially when compared to the quantities in coffee and tea.

The content of caffeine in chocolate is so low that it doesn’t even activate neural mechanisms. What energizes us after a piece of dark chocolate is another stimulant called theobromine, a naturally occurring compound that finds its primary and most popular source in cacao. To be fair, theobromine is also found in select tea plants, but it has more mg per serving in brewed cacao, cacao powder and dark chocolate than it does in tea. Theobromine belongs to the same class of stimulants as caffeine (if you look at their molecular structure, they are incredibly similar), but their effects on body and mind are different.

If caffeine is a strong nervous system stimulant, theobromine is pretty weak on the nervous system, acting more like a smooth muscle relaxant. While caffeine strongly inhibits the receptors of fatigue, theobromine just does a decent job at it, where you would need higher concentrations of theobromine to get the same effect of caffeine. More similar to the calming energy of tea, theobromine offers a consistent energy without the spike and crash of coffee. It is gentle, mild, has a slow onset, is long lasting and non-addictive whereas caffeine is intense, strong, fast acting, short lived and can be addictive.

In conclusion, we can say that coffee gives us a “frenetic energy”, tea a “calming energy” and chocolate a “lively energy”. You just need to choose what kind of energy you prefer.