| Caffeine: It’s not just in coffee anymore
Imagine a morning like this: You wake up, have a cup of coffee, one that's been brewed with caffeinated spring water. You eat a caffeinated doughnut, a caffeinated bagel and a large bowl of caffeinated oatmeal. In the shower you lather with caffeinated soap. You dry off, put on a pair of caffeine-infused tights, apply some caffeinated lip balm and pop a few caffeinated mints in your mouth. Before you scoff at such foolery, realize that all those caffeinated products are either already available to consumers or in development. (Yes, caffeine tights are out there, promising to increase metabolism.) The days of caffeine being available only in coffee, tea, soda, energy drinks and No-Doz tablets are long gone. It seems that each week brings a new caffeinated product to the shelves.
Coffee pioneer Alfred Peet dies
Alfred Peet, a pioneer in specialty coffee who shared the stage with the Bay Area culinary stars the shaped the region's food-centric reputation, died Wednesday at his home in Ashland, Ore. He was 87. The company he founded, Peet's Coffee & Tea Inc., has more than 150 establishments, all but 22 in California, but the first opened at Walnut and Vine streets in Berkeley in 1966, taking its place in what would become the Gourmet Ghetto. With his emphasis on specialty coffees and unique brewing techniques, Peet, the son of a Dutch roaster, put specialty coffee on the map - and in the process influenced the founders of Starbucks. "Up until the time he started, in 1966, basic American coffee was swill," said Jim Reynolds, roastmaster emeritus at Peet's.
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