The World of Caffeine (46 page)

Theobroma cacao
is cultivated below 1,000 feet altitude and grows exclusively between the latitudes of 20 north and 20 south. Other factors being equal, the productive yield of the tree increases toward the equator. The cacao tree requires a
warm, humid climate and does best with sixty to eighty inches of rainfall a year. It thrives at shade temperatures of 65 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit but can do well in the 105 degrees Fahrenheit common in West Africa.
³⁰

At the time Cortés arrived in Latin America, cacao was being actively traded in the Aztec capital and, because the Indians had managed a wild crop and raised trees from seeds on their own plantations, probably among the Yucatan farmers as well. However, once the conquistadors had subdued the natives, Spanish colonial governments assumed control of Indian agriculture, attaining a monopoly on cacao’s production and its trade in Europe. As a result, cacao sustained its position as Spain’s top export crop until the early seventeenth century. Perhaps there is some unknown magic to members of the Sterculiaceæ family, for as cola nuts were in Africa, cacao beans were used as money in Central America as late as the eighteenth century.

Africa is the world leader in cacao production. In 1590, the Spanish exported Venezuelan seedlings to Fernando Po, a small equatorial island near the coast of western Africa with a warm, wet climate and rich, well-drained soil. It became the first site of cacao cultivation outside Latin America. Ghana, however, was the first country of mainland Africa to attempt large-scale cacao cultivation. Teteh Quashie, who became a folk hero as a result, is credited with the institution of Ghana’s most valuable cash crop. A blacksmith who had worked as a migrant laborer on a cacao plantation in Fernando Po, Quashie brought pods back to his homeland. He started a cacao nursery in 1881 and began selling the pods to native farmers. The result was a cacao crop that today is the biggest in the world. Cacao from Ghana has set the standard for basic chocolate flavor, because her beans were fermented and cured with distinctive skill, and, in consequence, Ghana’s cacao has dominated the British and European markets for much of the twentieth century. Quashie is honored by a number of public buildings and monuments bearing his name in recognition of his seminal accomplishments.
³¹

The Spanish also took cacao west from the Americas. In 1663, Pedro de Laguna sailed on a galleon with cacao seeds from Acapulco to Manila. Ever since, chocolate has been a favorite food throughout the Philippines, and today many families grow a few cacao trees in their yards or in small orchards with other tree crops, such as mangos or bananas, and use the dried beans themselves or sell them in produce markets.

When cacao demand increased in the seventeenth centuiy, the French contested the Spanish monopoly on the crop, instituting cacao production in Martinique and Saint Lucia around 1660. The Dutch also began cacao production in the Dutch East Indies, and, as a result, Indonesia still produces seventy-five thousand tons of beans every year.

The well-known stimulating effects of cacao are the result of the additive or even synergistic effects of caffeine and one of caffeine’s cousins, the methylxanthine theobromine. Cacao powder averages about 2 percent theobromine and .2 percent caffeine. Both the caffeine and theobromine levels of the beans varies with the varietal type and is also affected by the fermentation process. Theobromine, commercially extracted from seed wastes,
³²
although much weaker milligram for milligram than caffeine, in sufficient quantities acts as a diuretic, smooth muscle relaxant, cardiac stimulant, and vasodilator. Which of these methylxanthines is predominant in producing cacao’s effects?

In a 1994 Johns Hopkins University study, caffeine was discriminated or detected by different subjects in threshold doses ranging between about 2 mg to just more than 180 mg, while theobromine was detected in doses ranging between 100 mg to 1, 000 mg.
³³
According to this measure, milligram for milligram, among individuals in the same subject group, caffeine was from three to fifty times more potent than theobromine. However, because about ten times as much theobromine as caffeine can typically be present in chocolate (a 1.5-ounce of chocolate bar can contain between 100 and 240 mg theobromine and 10 to 30 mg of caffeine), it is unclear which of these chemicals predominates. A cup of hot chocolate or glass of chocolate milk, prepared from a typical commercial mix, supplies about 60 mg of theobromine and about 5 mg of caffeine. The dose in a 1.5-ounce chocolate bar exceeds the theobromine discrimination threshold in about 15 percent of the subjects, while that of caffeine exceeds this threshold in over 50 percent of the subjects, suggesting that caffeine may be the more powerful stimulating component in most people. While the overall pharmacological effects of these drugs are similar, recent studies show that caffeine has a quicker onset, a shorter duration of action, and a longer list of differentiable physical and mental effects than theobromine.

After the coffee, tea, and cacao trees, yerba maté is the largest source of caffeine consumed in the world. The astringent beverage maté
(Gon gouha),
which has given its name to the plant from which it is infused, is the coffee and tea of a large group of people in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Ecuador, and Chile, in that it is the produced under cultivation, the
best maté is reputed to come from wild trees. More than 250,000 tons of yerba maté leaves are harvested every year, containing about 3,000 tons of caffeine, or nearly 3 percent of the world’s total, enough to enliven, very roughly, fifty billion cups of maté. Much of Brazilian and Paraguayan production is exported to Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay.
³⁴

Ilex paraguariensis
is a species of holly native to Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina, growing to a height of sixty to ninety feet in the wild, with oval dark green leaves six to eight inches long, and producing small white flowers. When cultivated it is trimmed to twelve to eighteen feet. The flowers form in the leaf axils and at the base of the small branches. Although harvesting begins three to five years after planting, full productivity is attained in ten years and continues for about another ten years. As with tea, a superior product is produced from very young, unopened leaflets. Harvesting is performed by Indians who climb the trees, clear them of vines, and cut off the smaller leafy branches, leaving the larger ones to maintain the health of the tree. The branches are bundled and briefly toasted by drawing over an open fire to dry, while stopping short of charring. After further drying at a processing factory, which takes about fifteen hours, during which the temperature is kept below 200 degrees Fahrenheit to avoid loss of caffeine potency, a threshing process is used to separate the leaf from the bark and twigs. The resulting leaf is sifted for grading and blending, then packed in 50- to 150-pound bags. It is aged for six months to a year and a half to produce a palatable beverage.

As is the case with
Camellia sinensis,
there has been a divergence of opinion about its botanical nomenclature. Today, however, it is generally acknowledged that
paraguariensis
is a single species with many varieties. The leaves are sold either green, producing a beverage with a disagreeable bitter astringency, or roasted, yielding a drink with a pleasant smoky flavor. Rich in vitamin C and tannins as well as caffeine, a 6-ounce cup of maté as it is usually prepared contains about the same amount of caffeine as a cup of tea. The Guarani Indians of Paraguay used yerba maté as a stimulant and to prevent scurvy. Today it is extensively cultivated in Argentina, where maté drinking is a social event that can continue for hours, and maté is the most popular caffeine-containing drink. It is also widely used in Paraguay, where it has been known as “Paraguay tea” for at least a century.
³⁵

A comparison of maté and ordinary tea was noted by two English writers toward the end of the nineteenth century. The first wrote that, as between coffee, tea, and chocolate:

The second likened the effects of the maté’s active principle to that of theine, the name given to caffeine as occurring in tea, and stated that some authorities claim maté is a species of tea.
³⁷

The methylxanthine content of maté, which is generally accepted as the basis for its use as a beverage, has been extensively investigated. Reported caffeine concentrations range from about 1 percent to 2 percent, the young leaves having the highest levels. However, because the beverage maté is brewed from as many as sixty different species of the
Ilex
genus, and, as noted below, because of the way it is prepared, a determination of the average caffeine levels occurring in the drink is problematic. Theobromine and theophylline may also occur in maté, although some investigators have failed to detect them. However, even if present, their concentrations in the dried leaf are pharmacologically insignificant.

Long before the Spanish explorers arrived in the early sixteenth century, the plant was infused by the indigenous population to make a beverage in those areas of South America to which it is native. Like the other caffeinated botanicals, maté was also employed as a means of exchange.
“Maté”
is a Spanish word derived from an Inca word meaning “calabash.” In South America, the leaves of yerba maté are infused and drunk in a calabash through a six-inch reed or silver straw with a bulb-shaped strainer
(bombilla)
to screen out the sediment. The native word for the plant is
“caa,”
but the Spanish called it
“Yerba.”
Maté’s use was eagerly adopted by the colonists, who found it so desirable that the governor of Paraguay gave settlers the right to impress the natives to collect the leaves for its preparation. Jesuit priests, who arrived in Paraguay around 1550, took control of the producing areas and began cultivation of selected varieties to ensure a good supply, and, in consequence, the drink has often been called “Jesuit tea.” Paraguayan prisoners brought back to Brazil by Portuguese invaders helped spread the knowledge of the drink in Brazil. Almost all Argentinean and Brazilian maté is produced through cultivation, while much of the Paraguayan leaf has been harvested from jungle plants.

When the tealike beverage is prepared in the traditional South American manner, boiling water is poured over the dried leaves in a small silver-mounted calabash about the size of an apple; in family circles the gourd and
bombilla
are passed around like a pot pipe. However, today a teapot and cups are frequently used instead of a gourd and straw. About one-half to two ounces of leaves are used for each quart of water or heated milk, and sugar and lemon are often added when milk has not been used. Because several successive infusions are made from the same leaf by adding more boiling water, it is very difficult to approximate the caffeine content of the resulting beverage. The best estimates suggest a range from about 25 mg per 6-ounce serving, about as much as a very weak cup of tea, up to about 100 mg, or the same as a cup of instant coffee.

Maté leaves are sold in many health food stores, usually as ingredients in herbal tea mixtures, such as Celestial Seasonings “Morning Thunder.” As is the case with other exotic caffeine-containing plant products, packages of maté sometimes misrepresent the product as a caffeine-free herbal tea.

In North America, the cured leaves of the yaupon holly,
Ilex vomitoria,
also called “cassina” or “Appalachian holly,”
³⁸
have been similarly infused for centuries to make cassina, a hot, stimulating drink. In 1542, Narvaez and Cabeza de Vaca, Spanish explorers of North America, described how cassina was used to make a ceremonial black drink and medicinal potation by the coastal Indians of North Carolina. In 1562, Capatain Laudonnière, who had sailed with the blessing of King Charles IX of France to find a suitable place to relocate French Protestants, was presented with basketfuls of cassina and observed the plant was used for currency among the natives. As recently as 1924, assemblies of Creek Indian men are described as taking concentrated infusions of cassina continually for two or three days running, in part to induce vomiting and receive its beneficial purgative effects.

Curing processes were developed early in this century by the Bureau of Chemistry of the United States Department of Agriculture for producing three types: green, black, and “cassina maté.” The last most closely resembles yerba maté.
³⁹
Even with the full backing of the federal government, none of these efforts resulted in a commercially viable drink.

Cola nuts are the caffeine-rich nuts of
Cola acuminata
and
Cola nitida,
evergreen forest trees native to tropical West Africa. The trees are members of the same botanical family as cacao and are widely cultivated in South America and have also been transported to India and China. Cola trees, which resemble chestnut trees, reach sixty feet in height. The brown, oblong nuts, about two inches long, are picked by hand and dried in the sun for use as ingredients in medicines and soft drinks.

Cola nuts, which have an acerbic, aromatic flavor, are commonly chewed by African laborers and other natives to reduce hunger and fatigue. In addition to a large dose of caffeine, cola nuts contain the glucoside kolanin, a fruit sugar that may contribute to their powerful revivifying effects.
⁴⁰
In Nigeria, for example, office workers often rely on chewing cola nuts for the same purpose as American white-collar employees drink coffee, and, as a gesture of hospitality, visitors to private homes are frequently offered cola nuts to chew. A cola nut brew, called “Sudan coffee” by the Arabs and “African tea” by others, was long used by the nomadic tribes of Somalia, the Sudan, and other African countries. In Brazil and the West Indies, the nuts are used to help sober up drunks and as a hangover remedy, much as some people use coffee in America and Europe,
⁴¹
and with just as little success.