Alternatives to Coffee

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Reduce your consumption of the addictive brew with tasty herbal alternatives to coffee.

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Recipes:

• Chicory Coffee Substitute 

• Healthy Mocha Recipe 

What would you do for a cup of coffee? According to food historian Martin Elkort, author of The Secret Life of Food (Putnam, 1991), “Sultan Selim I of Persia had his doctors hanged when they had the temerity to suggest he give up his daily cup.” You probably wouldn’t go so far, though you may feel like Joseph Cotten—-from the Hitchcock movie Shadow of a Doubt—-whose famous line was, “I can’t face the world in the morning. I must have coffee before I can speak.” If so, you’re not alone.

Half of all American adults start their mornings with at least one cup of coffee, down from 74.7 percent in 1962. How many people does this amount to? “Today, nearly 100 million American adults drink three or more cups of coffee each day,” says researcher and clinical nutritionist Stephen Cherniske, author of Caffeine Blues (Warner, 1998), a look at America’s number-one addiction.

Cherniske catalogs evidence linking the cumulative adverse effects of caffeine (particularly coffee) consumption to a host of health problems: asthma, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, anemia, calcium loss, osteoporosis, PMS, fibrocystic breast disease, fertility and conception disorders, complications of pregnancy and childbirth, diabetes, glaucoma, digestive disorders, ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, tension headaches, migraines, high blood pressure, heart disease, and certain cancers.

Caffeine dependence

Do you suffer from caffeine dependence syndrome? If you experience three out of the four following symptoms, then it’s likely that the answer is yes, say researchers at John’s Hopkins University in Baltimore:

• Withdrawal symptoms, such as headaches, depression, and fatigue

• Continued consumption of caffeine despite physical problems

• Unsuccessful attempts to cut back on or eliminate caffeine consumption

• Tolerance (you need or can tolerate increasingly large intakes)

What can you do? Well, you have a few choices. You can keep doing what you’re doing, or you can taper down, dilute your coffee, switch to decaf or banish the beany brew altogether.

Consider substituting half of your ground coffee with a brewable coffee alternative, such as roasted dandelion or chicory root. Chicory (Cichorium spp.) is native to Europe—-particularly popular in France, Belgium, and Holland, where its leaves are used as a salad vegetable—-and was naturalized in North America. Chicory bears heads of large, bright-blue flowers with dandelion-like roots. When roasted, the roots make a wonderful caffeine-free coffee extender or solo substitute. Chicory root contains lactucin and lactucopicrin, compounds with a mildly sedating effect on the central nervous system. In the Deep South, roasted chicory has been blended with coffee for decades to make the popular French Market Coffee.

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