At the risk of stating the obvious, caffeine addiction is something well understood by the IT professionals and gurus reading the IT News Digest blog on TechRepublic.
It is the absolutely essential stimulant necessary for proper functioning, especially when frantically fixing NOC outages or the million and one other IT emergencies that never seem to occur at a convenient time.
For moments when there is simply no Starbucks accessible, it might be of interest to you folks that caffeine is also added to various carbonated soft drinks. The question is, just how much exactly?
Well, the Journal of Food Science has a new piece from the The Institute of Food Technologists about the Caffeine Content of Prepackaged National-Brand and Private-Label Carbonated Beverages that should settle the caffeine debate once and for all.
They used high-performance liquid chromatography to analyze the caffeine contents of up to 56 national-brand as well as 75 private-label store brand carbonated beverages.
Access to the full journal, unfortunately, is on a paid basis only. But the following is an excerpt of the key findings from the executive summary of the article:
National Brands
- IGA Cola (4.9 mg/12 oz)
- Vault Zero (74 mg/12 oz)
- Coca-Cola (33.9 mg/12 oz)
- Diet Coke (46.3 mg/12 oz)
- Pepsi (38.9 mg/12 oz)
- Diet Pepsi (36.7 mg/12 oz)
- Dr Pepper (42.6 mg/12 oz)
- Diet Dr Pepper (44.1 mg/12 oz)
- Mountain Dew (54.8 mg/12 oz)
- Diet Mountain Dew (55.2 mg/12 oz)
Wal-Mart Store
- Sam’s Cola (12.7 mg/12 oz)
- Sam’s Diet Cola (13.3 mg/12 oz)
- Dr Thunder (30.6 mg/12 oz)
- Diet Dr Thunder (29.9 mg/12 oz)
- Mountain Lightning (46.5 mg/12 oz)
See you guys, I’m off to grab my Diet Coke now (they don’t sell Vault Zero or Mountain Dew over here). In the meantime, share with us — are you able to do without caffeine? Join the discussion.
