Heard someone ask a question on Facebook yesterday about whether they should put cafes into schools.

I am AGAINST the idea because there are five things young, developing bodies should be given extended grace against being exposed to, and caffeine is one of them, namely:

• violence
• abuse
• alcohol
• mobile phone radiation
• caffeine

I am sure there are more, such as McDonalds, Hungry Jacks, KFC, etc, but these five things appear to me as delivering nothing but harm to young minds and bodies.

Violence and abuse go without saying. Alcohol has been shown to be bad for us, especially developing minds, even though some culutures permit and encourage it (some cultures encourage female circumcision so just because something is culturally acceptable is not an argument of itself). And one of Australia’s leading brain surgeons has warned that people up to the age of their early twenties would do well to avoid using mobile phones altogether because of the acute vulnerability of our brains to phone radiation at that critical and formative stage of our lives.

But caffeine! Don’t get me started.

We don’t really need caffeine

Yes, here I am, someone who blends and sells a rich coffee blend to aficionados, saying I don’t believe we NEED caffeine.

We don’t.

The whole reason I created Baristador was to share with the world a top shelf espresso blend that tastes great even when you choose the negligible caffeine version.

If we sleep right, eat right and manage our bodies properly, we don’t need caffeine.

So when I see high school kids dragging themselves to school with large cans of caffeine-enriched soft drinks, I cringe.

Caffeine addiction is a very sick part of our society where we have decided to form habits around applying bandaids rather than read the ‘I want caffeine’ triggers for what they are: messages that something is out of balance.

Protein and exercise

Having worked with an exercise physiologist for almost two years now, I can attest that getting a skew towards more protein in my diet and some regular exercise, actually weaned me off NEEDING coffee.

Instead, these days I drink one or two espressos a day for the flavour, using my reduced caffeine coffee blends.

So, the only possible way I could ever bless the introduction of cafes into high schools would be if Baristador Espresso Blend with little or no caffeine was used.

Personally, I feel the same pity for people craving their coffee as I do for smokers craving their smokes or drug addicts craving their next hit. They really epitomise humankind at its lowest, most pathetic ebb of existence. Craving equals imprisonment and one thing I want our young people to experience before the weight of societal and famillial and personal responsibilties are lowered onto them, is liberation, the unbearable lightness of being, if you will.

Let them live frivolously and enjoy the passions and exuberance of youth – inside and out, which means, helping them choose the intoxication of being at one with nature and education and friendships, not the impoverished enslavement to a drug (legal or not)!