Tea, not coffee - Totally Off the Beam

[Jen Reese]

Steve:
I can't think of many parents who would allow any
> of their kids under roughly age 16 to drink coffee, and even if 
they
> did, they significantly limited the teen's intake of coffee. Tea 
was
> not usually so bad, I can remember on rare occassion drinking tea 
when
> I was very young, but that wasn't very often. Of course, any wise
> parent knows it make no sense to AMP UP your already overactive 
kids
> with coffee; as if being a parent wasn't hard enough already.

Jen: I grew up in Texas, where drinking sweetened ice-tea was a way 
of life from a very young age. We didn't drink it all the time like 
you said, but some nights for dinner we got to have tea instead of 
milk. Now my *cousins* OTOH drank coffee from a very young age, 
albeit with tons of milk and sugar. It was more of a dessert than a 
drink, really. We never even asked to drink coffee, thinking it 
smelled bad and tasted even worse because both my parents liked it 
black! 

Steve: 
> Of course, now days, teens drink coffee as their drug of choice. I 
met
> a guy working in a coffee shop who said he usually drank 12 
(TWELVE!)
> straight shots of Expresso before going to class (college classes).
> Can you spell heart attack?

Jen: TWELVE? He must be incredibly laid back if that doesn't get to 
him. I'm sure with the boom of coffee-houses, and readily available 
drinks with all the syrups, whipped cream, etc., a higher percentage 
of kids get hooked really early on (Starbucks, winning the war for 
brand loyalty by age 10). You couldn't pay me to drink black coffee 
as a kid, but some of the drinks today look like the equivalent of 
milkshakes. 

Jen, who almost never drinks coffee but can't pass up a Diet Coke ;).