Tea Whiz by Nestea appeared on supermarket shelves in 1973, and then was discontinued almost right away. Hard to imagine what thought process led Nestea to think Tea Whiz would be a good name.
The French scholar Arsene Thiebaud de Berneaud liked his coffee black. So much so that he "opposed with ferocity the then comparatively new custom of adding milk or cream to black coffee."
"He seems to have had an obsession that all mixtures of fluids were injurious... Sustained by this preconceived notion, he was able to publish a long diatribe in 1826, in which he accuses cafe au lait of causing almost every derangement known to medicine."
I've been able to find almost no other information about de Berneaud, so this one odd theory seems to be the most enduring thing he left behind.
Nordic entrepreneur Jakutyte is trying to launch a new product on Kickstarter. It's coffee for dogs. Or, as she's calling it, "Rooffee." She came up with that name, she said, by combining the words roots and coffee. (Surprised me it wasn't Wroof and coffee... but that would be Wrooffee.) She swears she didn't know there's a date-rape drug called roofies. She's posted an update on her Kickstarter page saying she's gonna change the name... but hasn't decided to what yet.
Her coffee for dogs doesn't actually contain any coffee. She says it's "a coffee type of drink made from Nordic wild roots containing no agricultural chemicals or pesticides, no caffeine, and no other nonsense." So it's actually brown liquid for dogs.
I posted five years ago about Norwegian Egg Coffee. But egg isn't the only unusual thing that people add to their coffee. A few years ago, there was a fad for butter coffee, aka Bulletproof Coffee. As the name implies, you mix butter into your coffee. People often add in some coconut oil as well. Apparently the butter binds with the caffeine, giving a longer, more powerful caffeine buzz. According to testimonials, it doesn't taste bad at all.
I'd be willing to give butter coffee a try, but I'll give mayonnaise coffee a pass.
Clear Coffee (aka "CLR CFF") describes itself as "the first colorless coffee in the world." From the product website:
This refreshing beverage is made from high quality Arabica coffee beans and pure water. It is produced by methods which have never been used before.
That's intriguingly vague. So is it just caffeinated water? Or is it caffeinated water with coffee flavoring?
The reasoning behind it seems to be that it's coffee that won't stain your teeth. If you like your coffee cold and black, this might work as a substitute. But if you drink it hot, with cream and sugar, this isn't going to do the trick.
Coffee consumption protects the liver from alcoholic cirrhosis. The more coffee the better the effect according to a 22 year study involving 125,000 subjects. Tea does not have the same effect, ruling out caffeine as the cause. So, hit the coffee if you drink much but not for any other form of the disease as alcoholic cirrhosis is the only form it benefits.
And now, yet another caffeine delivery system. Because what our over-caffeinated world clearly needs is more caffeine. So you can get your caffeine fix via an inhaler, a body spray, as you lather up in the shower, and now in your peanut butter.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.