Dairy-free milk is now a $2 billion industry, with sales having risen 61 percent between 20 (there was even a much-fussed-over oat milk shortage in the summer of 2018). Veganism has elevated itself from a relatively fringe ideology to so mainstream that one of the most famous burgers in the country is made out of wheat and potatoes. Within the past decade or so, the US has become far more accommodating to people with all kinds of food sensitivities and diet regimens. But maybe the more difficult addiction to kick is the thing it represents. So where is the caffeine backlash? Where are the adorable cafes that proudly label themselves as caffeine-free, with all the millennial-baiting accoutrements but minus the addictive stimulant? Where are the startups clamoring to sell the next cool decaf coffee brand? Where are the Instagram accounts documenting gorgeous, “natural,” caffeine-less lifestyles? People kick caffeine addictions all the time. And in an era when scary-sounding words are anathema to what’s considered “healthy” eating, and where the disavowal of scary-sounding substances is the bedrock of the modern dieting industry, the stubborn ubiquity of caffeine is curious. But caffeine is still a drug, an addictive one, and these are scary words. Caffeine, of course, is a stimulant it makes us feel more present, more positive, and more awake.
People love coffee we love it so much that many of us are using it as a stand-in for an online persona, or at least implying it’s the only reason we get anything done. Scrolling through coffee hashtags on Instagram, you begin to suspect that the entire world is being held together with a single substance, that America actually does run on Dunkin’.Ī post shared by Lindsey Lo on at 6:25am PSTĪnd it does, to an extent - 64 percent of Americans drink coffee every day, according to the National Coffee Association, and 87 percent regularly consume caffeine. There are coffee memes for moms, coffee memes for CrossFitters, for entrepreneurs, even ones for multilevel marketers. They range from the cutesy (“ But first, coffee”) to the self-deprecating (“ I’m sorry for what I said before I had my coffee”) to the vaguely threatening (“ I drink coffee for your protection” or “ Coffee: a magical substance that turns ‘leave me alone or die’ into ‘good morning, honey!’”). It’s on the more offensive end of a spectrum made up of thousands of coffee-related quotes on Instagram that imply the poster would rather literally die before drinking a morning beverage that didn’t contain caffeine.
Below it are the hashtags #CaffeineAddict, #WorkingMomLife, and the clincher, #DeathBeforeDecaf. “Decaffeinated coffee is like a hooker who only wants to cuddle.” Like many quotes on Instagram, this one is styled in a cutesy sans serif font and has the beigeness of a black-and-white image that’s been reposted and refiltered dozens of times over.