An espresso has less caffeine than a cup of coffee

• A cup of drip brewed coffee has about 115 milligrams of caffeine.
•   An espresso and percolated coffee about 80 mg.
• Instant coffee has about 65 mg of caffeine.
• Decaffeinated coffee is not totally caffeine free; it contains about 3mg of caffeine.
• A can of Coke has about 45 mg of caffeine.
•   Tea has about 40 mg of caffeine.
•  An ounce of chocolate contains about 20 mg of caffeine.

Coffee is the world’s most popular stimulant: four out of five Americans drink it every day, consuming more than 400 million cups a day. Consumption in Scandinavian countries is more than 12kg per capita. With more than 25 million people employed in this industry, coffee is second only to oil in world trade.

Although coffee is believed to have been grown near the Red Sea since the 7th century, an Arabian author of the 15th century wrote that Ethiopians enjoyed coffee ever since anyone could remember. By the 16th century, coffee plants were found throughout the Yemen region of Arabia. After a Turkish ambassador introduced it to the court of Louis XIV in 1669, Europeans quickly acquired a taste for it. A few years later, the Dutch introduced coffee in Java. In 1714, the Frenchman Desclieux planted a single sapling of a coffee tree on the island of Martinique. Plantations soon grew from French Guiana to Brazil and Central America.

• Red coffee beans ready for picking.
• Coffee is the seed of a cherry from the tree Genus coffea, a tree yielding about 1kg of coffee per year.
•  There are more than 25 species of coffee.
• The three main commercial types being Robusta, Liberia, and Arabica.
•   Arabica represents 70 per cent of total production.
•  Caffeine increases the power of aspirin and other painkillers, that is why it is found in some medicines. Ironically, caffeine withdrawal also is one of the most common causes of headaches.
• Women who drink two or more cups of coffee a day also have an increased risk of developing osteoporosis. This however, can be offset  by drinking milk or yogurt to replace the lost calcium.
•    Most studies have found that high caffeine consumption impairs fertility and taken during pregnancy may cause premature or defected birth.
•    Caffeine is removed from the coffee by treating the green beans with chlorinated  hydrocarbon solvents.
•  Instant coffee is prepared by mixing ground and roasted coffee with hot water. The water is then evaporated by spray dryers and high pressure, leaving only coffee powder.
•     In some coffee products, coffee is replaced with chicory — a wildflower herb, fig, date, malt or barley, remotely resembling real coffee.