#38 An oddly divisive area of wellness and finding a middle ground
Plus, from pumpkin spice lattes to pecan pie, the real reason our appetites unhelpfully pivot come autumn—and the expert take on what to do about it...
'Give me a break’
‘Absolute tosh’
‘Do better’
‘Oh my days are you actually demonising caffeine and comparing it to alcohol?!’
These were some of the comments left on a post shared by Women’s Health on their Instagram to promote a piece I wrote for them last week, in which I delved into the evidence that more people are rethinking their triple-shot americano and swapping in decaf, matcha and adaptogenic mushrooms. The thought-provoking headline—for which all credit must go to the magazine’s brilliant features director Roisin Dervish-O’Kane—read: ‘Is coffee the new alcohol? Why health-conscious types are in their post-caffeine era’ (which you can read in full here). It stirred up a small, but surprisingly heated, debate.
Surprising, because, what it boiled down to was that everyone actually agreed on a healthy middle ground: That caffeine can be beneficial in moderation for those whose bodies are able to metabolise it well, while others struggling with anxiety and disrupted sleep might experience a boost from cutting down. Those now being mindful of their coffee consumption had certainly not blacklisted it, and others still sipping it (including myself!) were alert to the concept of too much of a good thing. I had to laugh at one particular sassy message: ‘No, I’m sorry. Everything in life is about balance and not excess.’ It’s funny because if she had deigned to read the full piece, that is the exact conclusion.
Yet, people act strangely on social media—and in ways they wouldn’t IRL. Like the Pilates teacher who felt it was worth scrolling almost a year down my feed to find a picture of me with a cocktail, essentially accusing me of being a hypocrite (when I had never advocated giving up booze or caffeine entirely). Sigh. But the rather odd online divisiveness of coffee that I witnessed this week feels, in some ways, like a teeny, tiny microcosm of some much larger (and, heartbreakingly, nastier) polarisation that we’ve seen beamed from our screens this week. The jumping to conclusions in a state of whipped-up emotion, without establishing the core facts and hearing the other viewpoint. Because, once everything’s sunk in, it transpires that as humans we all agree on far more than we don’t.