Thursday, July 2, 2009

Potassium in Coffee: Something to Drink Over

I don't know about you, but being a fairly avid cyclist, I'm always looking for ways to get more potassium. Salt isn't a problem. Neither is sugar/glucose, or really calcium, but the potassium magnesium thing: that's another dealio.

I automatically and categorically denied Jim's assertion the other day that a cup of coffee has the greatist potassium hit in it of anything known to man. "Nuh-uh!" I spurted, vigorously shaking my head. "Look it up," he said gently (which provoked me even more); I did so, and yup, yup, yup, there it was, like Marcy Playground: over 20,000 whatevers per cup. Dayum.

Many cyclists drink copious cups of coffee. I know I do, but then, I was drinking coffee way before the biking bug bit. Lance Armstrong, for example, drinks at least two large cups every morning, likely, more. Could it be that imbibing coffee isn't about the caffeine per cup, necessarily, or rather, that the caffeine is just an added benefit, and in fact, the common addiction to coffee has to do with the potassium?

...for that matter, could Americans' collective addiction to coffee have less, even little to do with the caffeine, nothing to do with the ambiance of the coffeehouse, and possibly everything to do with living in a "Fast-Food Nation" and eating hugely minerally deprived diets? "Potassium....give me potassium or bust."

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