When do you feel most productive, is it in the morning or the afternoon? Turns out, your preferred caffeination vehicle may have something to do with it. According to a new survey, coffee drinkers are AM people and tea drinkers are PM.
As reported by Yahoo! News, a survey conducted by OnePoll on behalf of tea company Celestial Seasonings polled just over 2,000 Americans about their beverage consumption habits. They found that, while 65% of all coffee drinkers polled say there are most motivated in the morningโthe most of any beverageโthat energy drops significantly in the afternoon, with only 29% stating that they are able to keep the same level of energy post-lunch. Tea drinkers, on the other hand, were raring to go in the afternoon at a rate of 41%.
And despite Celestial Seasonings trying to โhello fellow youthsโ coffee drinkers into switching to tea with the pollโs findings that tea is becoming a popular drink with millennialsโ60% of all respondents who stated they prefer tea are in the category, per the surveyโthe study finds that coffee and tea drinkers alike place a โhigh importance on their health and strive to make healthful choices,โ at 92% and 93%, respectively.
But the study did find that coffee drinkers experienced โfeelings of anxiety or stressโ at around a 50% higher rate than that of tea drinkers, 38% to 25% in total.
For what itโs worth, based on my own very scientific research (read: anecdotal experience, coffeeโs effect on wakefulness varies wildly depending upon whether it is the first cup in the morning, which brings the pep, or the fourth cup in the afternoon, the one that makes me sleepier than any Sleepy Time tea wishes it could. Science has all but already figured out why this is, something called โsleep pressure.โ Conversely, switching to an afternoon tea gives me the needed caffeine boost without the crash.
The survey doesn’t attempt to posit any sort of explanation for why coffee and tea drinkers exist on opposite sides of the noon line. Does one drink coffee in the morning because they are a morning person or are a morning person because they drink coffee? But still, it offers good advice for those needing a energy boost: be caffeine-fluid. You can be a coffee person in the AM and a tea person in the PM. You contain multitudes.
Zac Cadwaladerย is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas.ย Read more Zac Cadwaladerย on Sprudge.
