@TexasUberAlles  
You may be right about Robusta, but I was talking about coffee. The only-coffee-and-water beverage.
 
We have Starbucks in Brazil, they make good coffee flavored milkshakes. For real coffee people go elsewhere. They make decent espresso, but no more than that.
 
Caffeine is addictive, but withdrawal is simply annoying and isn’t a health hazard. I take a month off every few years. Other legal drugs are typically much more damaging to health. Not a bad habit to have, since some coffee everyday prevents some diseases.
 
I’ve got a chance to use the quote from this strip recently! In a airplane trip I’ve been served coffee that could only been described as hatred squeezed on a styrofoam cup.

@Blissey1  
its lower than over three cups…the threshold for addiction is 100mg a day which is just over 1 cup in drip. One can start to develop dependency in only a matter of a week.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine_dependence
 
Most people dont get headaches and stuff, just lower levels of activity than they’d have without the addiction.

@Blissey1  
Joke.
 
But I do probably drink too much but that’s my own fault.

@Pagan  
…not sure if sarcasm…

@Blissey1  
Exactly alcohol isn’t that bad I drink two bottles of whiskey a day because I WANT to not because I HAVE to.

@Keith Mowz  
for the record, caffeine is also “legit literally addictive”. you just have to regularly drink like +3 cups a day every single day for you get develop a dependence on it. And as long as you avoid that dependence, then it has basically zero negative effects while doing a bunch of beneficial things for you. and as far as drugs go, it’s really not that expensive at all. like $1.50 for a cup at mcdonalds, which is what you do if all you care about is the caffeine.
 
and on the topic of alcohol, it actually also isn’t all that harmful for you as long as you don’t binge on it or drive under the influence. and while it is a lot more addictive than caffeine, it’s not that addictive. You can easily have a single drink with dinner every night and not become addicted.

@Keith Mowz
 
One reason why I drink coffee is simply because my Dad likes it and drinks it, and as such he also is enthusiastic about drinking coffee with me.
 
Oh and having stocked up on 11 Oz. Cans of organic coffee at $2.49 each at a discount store helps too. We still have more than ten cans of it unopened.

@Keith Mowz  
I drink things I liked the first time.  
That includes coffee and various types of booze

@DarkSpeed  
Being in the Great Lakes I’m close enough to Canada to have Tim Hortons. Or I would, if I gave a fuck about coffee. I see less than zero reason to develop a taste for a beverage that is expensive and habitual. Especially one that tastes like garbage until you forcibly expose yourself to it enough to convince yourself you like it.
 
I take the same stance on alcohol, but moreso obviously because legit literally addictive and straight up harmful.

@Agent Tasmania  
Having been born and been living in Washington state my whole life, I am very familiar to Starbucks. Tully’s is pretty common too. And Dutch Bros. (At least in Oregon for the last one).

@TexasUberAlles  
Suppose my view was a little slanted the other way, since they pretty much failed in Australia. Market was already occupied by a number of locals.

@Agent Tasmania  
I’m kind of surprised to find that they’re only in 63 countries; I really thought they were pretty much everywhere that American tourists go. Which is, y’know, everywhere.
 
Unsurprisingly, there are none at all in Italy.
 
 

@TexasUberAlles  
Only if you’re American.
 
Everywhere else has better chains and healthy competition.

@TexasUberAlles
 
Oh thanks, I just looked in Google Maps and there’s one about three miles from my house and I never knew about it. Though I could also easily buy the coffee in Walmart.

@BarryFromMars  
Coffee is like magic for headaches; if you have a Starbucks nearby– hahahahaha of course you do– their coffee has way more caffeine than most places.  
 
I use these things to make sure I’m getting my recommmended daily allowance of the jitters, and add a couple to a cup for clinical-strength purposes. They’re also a lot more convenient for making coffee-flavored [whatever] than actual coffee, especially for frozen stuff where the, uh, not-so-gentle flavor profile is less of an issue.

@TexasUberAlles
 
Kinda wish I had some of that coffee now since I yet have a swollen throat and minor headache this January Fifth.

@hackbarth  
anything not made from Coffea Arabica is a gross mistake  
Now, now– Robusta has a solid place in coffee~~based drinks, for the same reason only a fool wastes top shelf liquor on a mixed drink; bold and uncomplicated flavors are more useful when combining with other flavors, or when texture or presentation is more important. 100% Arabica is kind of overkill if you’re making a frozen/iced coffee, for example-~~ especially if it’s tarted up with the farrago of flavorings typically added to such concoctions– because so much of the subtlety and flavor balance are lost to the cold. Robusta is also more medicinally useful than Arabica, since it has far higher concentrations of caffeine, pyrazine, and antioxidant flavanols; traditional Vietnamese coffee will obliterate headaches and swelling/inflammation.

@BarryFromMars
 
*the most I’ve had lately, in the last six months
 
@hackbarth
 
And then there’s chestnut substitute coffee.

@TexasUberAlles  
@BarryFromMars  
Coffee is made from coffee. And I would venture to say anything not made from Coffea Arabica is a gross mistake of a beverage.
 
And yes, I too prefer organic tomatoes, the flavor is indeed better. It if it is because organic producers take more care, if traditional producer worry only with shelf-life, I don’t know. But for coffee my experience is that organic and traditional are the same, above certain grade of coffee, traditional producers do worry a lot with quality of the final product. Of course you have the low quality mass market coffee, but I’m not talking about that.

@TexasUberAlles
 
Makes sense in a way. Doesn’t mean I find them good to eat, I haven’t eaten tomatoes like that for a long time. The most I’ve had is whatever organic cherry tomatoes Aldi has.
 
I never did try parsnip coffee, it just came to mind. Thanks for the recommendation though!

@BarryFromMars  
Tomatoes in particular have been bred to be mealy, flavorless lumps at the commercial level, because the more juicy and flavorful a tomato is the shorter its viable shelf life and the more likely it is to get pulped in transport; we only have grocery store tomatoes year-round because they’re trucked in bulk from places where the weather is still appropriate for them, so the industrial production goal is toughness rather than tastiness.
 
parsnip coffee  
 
Chicory, amigo– chicory is your best coffee substitute if you don’t want coffee coffee. Add some dried yaupon leaves if you want to up the caffeine content; it’s the only caffeinated plant native to North America, and it’s a weed shrub across most of Texas and The South, so a lot of people will pay you haul it away.

@Maya
 
I wanted some pumpkin flavored coffee flavored rice based ice cream though, wah wah wah  
wah wah wah  
wah wah wah  
(really that does sound nice to me)

@BarryFromMars  
SON, A MAN´S COFFEE IS MADE FROM COFFEE BEANS; DON´T MESS WITH PERFECTION!

There’s also the option of making a coffee substitute out of parsnips or other foods. Chop the parsnips up fine, bake them ‘till they’re black, use them as coffee grounds.

@hackbarth
 
There’s really a big difference in flavor when it comes to tomatoes; grown in my backyard is always tastier because I can just pluck it off the stem when it’s ripe even if it isn’t organic. I’m sure a lot of people here know that already, I’m just saying to add to the discussion; local food can be a lot tastier than at a lot of grocery stores. Buying non-organic tomatoes at Walmart has, in my experience (and this is years old by this point) like eating cardboard. The same goes for potatoes, buying locally grown organic ones was awesome in flavor.