Legend has it that coffee was discovered by an Arabian goat herder named Kaldi. His goats were very excited after consuming berries that were later discovered to be coffee cherries. Stop me if you've heard this one. That fable goes hand in hand with the Mongolian legend in which a tea leaf drifted into the window and into a cup of hot water. I'm not sure I believe either of those stories, but I guess both coffee and tea had to be discovered somehow, and since I wasn't there I can't claim to know.

What I can claim to know is the caffeine content of those supposed-magical-goat-exciting fruits. I can claim to know this because I've done some research. Exciting, huh? Caffeine itself is a white powder and doesn't taste so great alone. It's made up of Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen and Oxygen. C8H10N4O2, to be exact. Caffeine is a natural pesticide that can paralyze its consumers (if, of course, they're bugs).

Coffee and the other 60-odd plants naturally containing caffeine may be decaffeinated in several ways. Most of these processes involve soaking the beans in a solvent, or sometimes just in water. The extracted caffeine can then be harvested and added to products such as soft drinks (for flavor) and medicines (for effectiveness). Caffeine content is measured by the amount of trimethylxanthine (fancy scientific word for caffeine) that is removed during decaffeinating.

Caffeine content will of course vary depending on the preparation of the coffee or other source. In general this is the caffeine you're consuming:

After your long night on New Year's Eve, wake up and reach for your cup of trimethylxanthine-infused coffee - unless, of course, it's your New Year's resolution to give it up. In this case you won't last long because of its inherent, slightly addictive nature. You may as well give in now.