204 MUTATIONS 



TABLE 4 



Consumption of coffee, tea, and cocoa in the United States. 



1935-39 1947-49 1957 



Coffee 14.0 18.2 15.8 



Tea 0.67 0.58 0.61 



Cocoa beans 4.4 4.1 4.1 



Data are aveiage pounds per year per capita. (World Almanac 

 1960.) 



the picture would be very different in Great Britain, China, or 

 Japan. Cocoa bean consumption is largely in the form of chocolate 

 rather than beverages. 



Next we have to know something about the absorption of caffeine 

 and its distribution in the body. 



Stern: May I just ask one unimportant question? Since you brought 

 up the variation in amount of coffee per person, is this for the whole 

 population or per adult person? 



Goldstein: This is for the whole population. 



Stern: There must be great variation in the number of children under 

 10 in the afterwar period as compared at least to 1935-39, I think. 



Goldstein: That may well level it out. I have a calculation on the 

 1957 consumption, corrected for the population under 14 in that year, 

 but to the extent that this correction differs in other years, my state- 

 ments about year-to-year changes in consumption would have to be 

 amended. That is quite right. 



Caffeine taken by mouth is very rapidly absorbed. I have data on 

 two types of experiment in which this was directly studied. Figure 28A 

 is an unpublished experiment of our own, in which 300 mg of caffeine 

 were given in decaffeinated coffee to ten young men. Blood caffeine was 

 measured by the method of Axelrod and Reichenthal (3), which in- 

 volves the complete extraction of caffeine from plasma at neutral pH 

 into benzene, followed by re-extraction into very strong acid, and ultra- 

 violet spectrophotometry. The extraction procedure is based on the fact 

 that caffeine is uncharged in the region of neutrality. The method is 

 fairly sensitive and quite specific in that it differentiates between 

 caffeine and its metabolites, which is the most important differentiation 

 one has to make. 



You see that in these ten subjects the maximum caffeine level was 

 reached within one hour, which is the earliest time we took samples. 



