Where Do You Get Your Morning Jolt?

If the folk who worked at the Gano Excel corporate offices weren’t coffee crazy, there’d be something seriously wrong. So, it shouldn’t surprised you that most of us just can’t get through those first few hours of the day without a couple of cups of coffee saturating our systems with a healthy morning dose of good old-fashioned C8H10N4O2 (that’s caffeine in fancy-pants science speak). There was a time — and what a time! — when people just automatically turned to coffee for their morning jolt. Nowadays, things are a little more complicated; we’ve got energy drinks like Monster, Rockstar, and the dreaded Red Bull to take healthful, robust coffee’s place in our morning routines. Newsday.com blogger Jessica Yadegaran recently wrote an article that discusses the “dark side” of caffeine and energy drinks. The article chronicles caffeine’s many health benefits — including anti-diabetes and anti-Parkinson’s disease qualities, along with the expected energy boost and increased focus — while at the same time warning us to be reasonable with our caffeine consumption. Most instant coffees have 140 mg of caffeine per 12-oz serving, with brewed coffee coming in at around 200 milligrams per. Compare that to, say, a Fixx energy drink with a whopping 500 per 20-oz serving. (Source.) And all that jittery junk doesn’t even scratch the surface: think about all the chemicals and high-fructose corn syrup that make your energy-in-a-can so tasty…and potentially harmful. Junaid Khan, a cardiac surgeon, explains how too much caffeine can be a very bad thing: “The problem I have with [energy drinks] is that people don’t realize how much caffeine they’re getting…Young kids are coming in with heart arrhythmias. They think [these energy drinks] are like Diet Coke, and they’re not.” Dr. Khan’s statement sent a wave of relief through us here at Gano Excel. See, we’re drinking coffee — chocked full of fiber and anti-oxidants, good-to-the-last-sip coffee — not Monster or any of that other stuff. So, you’ve got a pretty simple choice here: get your morning caffeine fix from a can of goodness-knows-what, yellow-tinted junk, or from a cup of full-flavored coffee enriched with the world’s most powerful botanical booster. Which do you think is better?