Coffea stenophylla: A forgotten bean that could save coffee from extinction
smithsonianmag.com166 points by derbOac 2 days ago
166 points by derbOac 2 days ago
Maybe the answer is for someone to work on boosting natural caffeine levels in yaupon holly tea.
It grows wild all over the SE US and can withstand multi-year drought or regular floods though it does best in a situation where it gets regular rainfall. You may have some in your own yard used as a hedge plant. I have several large trees on my place. It spreads underground by suckers and will take over an area if you do nothing to contain it. It is very strong once it forms a thicket. I have driven across a yaupon thicket in a seismic buggy and been in a situation where none of the tires were touching the ground as I drove because I was crossing a thick tangle of yaupon that supported the vehicle.
Caffeine levels are lower than coffee beans (40-60 mg versus >150 mg I think). Yaupon does also have theobromines, vasodilators, that are supposed to help it prevent the caffeine crash.
I have some leaves dried and drink it make a tea occasionally when I want a boost but not a cup of coffee level boost. It tastes great and is easy to prepare at home.
[0]https://yauponbrothers.com/blogs/news/is-yaupon-better-than-...
There are other sources of information about yaupon holly. It is proposed that the British naturalist who discovered Native Americans using it in their own ceremonies and drinking it casually decided to name it ilex vomitoria not because it was dangerous or poisonous to consume but because since it grew wild in the colonies, it could be a serious competitor to English tea so he used the name to make it less attractive.
> Maybe the answer is for someone to work on boosting natural caffeine levels in yaupon holly tea
The problem isn't getting caffeine, though. You can buy a tub of 200mg caffeine pills for $3. People like coffee. Substituting coffee isn't just a matter of caffeine for drinkers.
As the article states, the taste is complex beyond our understanding.
"When it comes to taste, coffee is amazingly complex. A single cup may contain up to 1,200 volatile compounds. Yet what you perceive in a cup depends on many things besides the plant’s genome: the environment in which it grew, the weather, the roast, the water used for brewing. Even the color of the cup matters. White makes coffee seem more intense, while clear glass makes it seem sweeter."
tbh i drink a coffee in the morning every day, no sugar, i think it tastes objectively terrible, like bitter dirt, but it's hijacked my reward pathway in the same way that nicotine or ethanol does, that it makes me enjoy the taste somehow
Maybe there is that, but it can also just be an acquired test.
No one likes bitterness initially, the ability to taste bitterness is essentially a poison detector, but it may still trigger with substances that are safe, at least at the dosage you are taking them. As you age, you get to recognize these safe cases with your other senses and override your poison detector, which lets you appreciate the taste.
Herbal tea, tonic water, grapefruit juice, etc... All bitter, and most people dislike them initially, but after a while some will appreciate, and people don't drink them for the psychoactive effect.
Try adding cocoa powder, no sugar. Add the powder first, coffee liquid afterwards to minimize clumping.
The cocoa itself is quite good for you, dissolving it will cool the coffee, and it will deepen the flavor.
I should try cinnamon with this.
Edit: dutch-process cocoa powder uses sodium hydroxide to reduce acidity of cocoa. Non-"dutched" cocoa is much more healthy, but alas acidic.
Just out of interest: do you notice any difference at all between different brands of coffee? I am with on the idea that coffee tastes awful, but despite that I still prefer certain brands that taste subjectively better.
There are thousands of ways to enjoy coffee. I’m not a coffee nerd at all, but getting a whole bean that you like from a reputable (local if possible) roaster and grinding it yourself is pretty easy and you get coffee that’s considerably better than grocery store ground coffee. You have to try several different beans and brands to get an idea for what’s available, buy 8-10 ounce packs at a time then when you find one you like buy in bulk. Also, anything in pods is absolute garbage, so don’t even consider it.
Yeah, pretty much. I drink tea from time to time, but I still prefer coffee. I don't know, feels more earthy or fuller? I also like the smell better.
Try loose leaf tea, specifically roasted oolong, black teas, or pu erh. r/tea has a good wiki on which reputable vendors to buy from [0].
I agree. You can get your caffeine boost from a pill if that floats your boat. I too love coffee and for a variety of reasons. I was only mentioning that there is a native plant that produces caffeine and has a pleasant taste so that it could serve as a caffeine (or tea) substitute in the event that supplies of real coffee became unreliable for any reason.
I drink lots of coffee and various teas.
Maybe I’m just too deep into coffee at this point, but unless yaupon has different origins, processes, or varietals, I don’t really see folks in the specialty coffee world making the switch.
That said, it is interesting, and I’d definitely give it a try.
Some people do drink coffee just for the caffeine—but those folks aren’t usually worried about beans or brew methods. They’re just as likely to grab an energy drink or whatever’s convenient.
But for a lot of us, coffee’s more than that. There’s a whole culture around it, and I don’t see that going away anytime soon.
Then again, I'm deep into coffee, so I'm probably biased.
I agree that there is no likelihood that coffee snobs are gonna jump to yaupon tea. I mentioned this really just to point out that there is a native plant here in North America that produces caffeine so if one day we wake up and supplies of the real beans are short or interrupted for long periods we will have something totally free to brew up for a caffeine hit. If you're out camping in an area where yaupon grows wild you can always grab a few leaves, wash them and dry them until they're brown, crush them and boil some tea water. No need for a late night cup of coffee that could keep you too wired to rest when you can enjoy a simple cup of yaupon tea that won't leave you wired.
I drink a lot of coffee too. I enjoy the flavor and hanging around without a cup of coffee feels strange. Sometimes I just add some boiling water to the dust in the coffee cup, stir it up and see what happens. I've certainly had worse at more gas stations than I care to remember.
There are so many interesting native plants that provide alternatives to our extremely rigid globalized food systems.
Also to note Ilex vomitoria is in the same genus as yerba mate, Ilex paraguariensis.
I enjoy checking all the native plants growing on my place. I discovered another yesterday that I would love to eradicate since it really takes over quickly.
It's in the geranium family Geraniaceae, and is one of the most ancient cultivated plants around. Its use was so common that it has spread from the Mediterranean area where it is native to most every other inhabited place. People ate it and fed it to their animals and it was used as a medicine so they had multiple reasons to carry some with them as they migrated across the landscape.
Redstem Stork's Bill [0]https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47687-Erodium-cicutarium
Supposed to taste like a parsley. I ate some yesterday and agree that it is close to parsley with a slightly more sharp flavor if you just eat the leaves and stems. I tried some of the seed pods and that was a no-go. They would need to be cooked to be edible since they are hard and fibrous raw. I haven't tried the root yet.
It's unlikely that I will ever eat my way out of this invasive infestation but I will add some to the salad to see whether my wife notices.
Can you rebrand a species? Drinking vomitoria sounds less than appetizing.
Yes you can. See Patagonian Toothfish -> Chilean Seabass.
Or Chinese Gooseberry -> Kiwi Fruit.
To be fair, a lot of Asian ingredients have picked up such weird English translations that they could use a rebrand. Case in point: "Prickly pear ash" is an amazingly unappetizing translation of the spice's proper name, sanshō or sancho.
"Prickly ash" is an ingredient in Chinese cuisine, particularly Szechuan cooking. We buy it in quantity at Asian groceries where it's pretty inexpensive.
In the US it's known as "Szechuan peppercorn". Preparing it for use requires carefully inspecting a handful for stems and thorns (which can be quite big), pan toasting and crushing/grinding to a coarse powder.
As pointed out in the sister comment, the spice has a mild numbing effect which counters the heat of chilis. Adding a little to hot dishes makes the flavor more complex and enjoyable.
For people who like to cook it's an ingredient worth experimenting with across culinary boundaries.
Part of the problem with the English translations is this ambiguity. Sansho comes from a different species (Zanthoxylum piperitum) of the same genus, native to Japan and Korea. The flavor is different, but reminiscent. I keep both sansho and red Sichuan peppercorns for use in different dishes.
Is that prickly ash? Like a toothache tree with all the sharp spikes on the trunk?
It looks like sancho is the berry produced by the tree. The leaves look similar to our toothache tree or Hercules Club as some call it. I know that the bark here in NAmerica has been used as a local anesthetic for a long time. It produces a tingly, numbing sensation when it becomes wet. I have used the bark to numb gums or throat pain. I never tried the berries.
My tree here died in the last drought. It was a birdshit variety since it was growing along the fence. The seed was dropped by a bird as it rested on the fence and I got a tree as a result! Gotta wait for the next one I guess.
Different tree, same genus. I'm not sure if all species (of 250+) in the genus have edible fruit, but the berries of several Asian species are harvested for spices, including Sichuan Peppercorns, which are made from the dried berries.
I would bet that the flavor (citrusy, with a numbing effect) is similar among all the species, but varies in strength and pungency. I'm not sure if I would bet that any species is safe to eat, however.
I'll need to look into the ways the tree was used by Native Americans and early settlers. I have known about the use of the bark for decades but don't recall anything about other parts of the tree. Thanks for the information.
I always thought it was called that because it was used by native Americans to make 'black drink' which they consumed ceremonially, tending to vomit afterwards.
The naming of yaupon really ticks me off, of all the things that should get a scientific rename it's yaupon, clearly it was a successful marketing effort by the Empire, er, by the British to knock out a delicious and ubiquitous competitor.
I can see the guy now as the realization that this native plant could undermine the British East India tea trade if people came to enjoy yaupon tea. It probably didn't take any convincing to get him to assign such an uninviting name to the plant and in doing so, save one of the British Empire's main trade items.
It was definitely a chickenshit move on his part though.
Does it taste better than Yerba Mate? That is definitely an "acquired taste" and while you can get used to it and even like it as much as tea, I don't think it can hold a candle to coffee.
Caffeine production is likely difficult in the face of a drier climate. Caffeine is present in the plant as a pesticide. Insects are a much bigger problem in wet climates over dry.
Having grown up in a wet climate (Chicago) but now living in a dry one (Utah) I can say that finding a droubt tolerant species which concerns itself with pesticide production may be difficult. The same water which coffee relies on is the same stuff pests rely on to reproduce. My mother was from Utah, and she always lamented at the small size of her flowers growing up in Chicago. They are much larger in Utah because they can get big without insects eating them.
(I say all this as a point of interest, but I don't drink coffee myself.)
Not that this applies to you, but coffee is definitely one of the things the Utah-based religions and metacultures should reconsider. Both coffee and tea are extraordinarily healthy compared to their more commonly preferred soda/diet sodas, and much more satisfying. Further, they already allow tea in subculture rulesets like Korea (one can speak with former proselytizers that sold the ideas in the region if doubt is one's initial thoughts). Most trace back their current adherence to cultural baggage of the same diet notions that led to Seventh day Adventists's diets, Wheaties, Kellogg Cereals, etc. Some great articles in Dialogue for the Utah-metaculture based curious. It's clear that the health advice banning coffee is a remnant of earlier times and currently operates as a shibboleth and token of obedience without merit.
A favourite YouTube documentarist, https://www.youtube.com/@KnowingBetter , has done several hours on the fascinating connections between the "major cults", their histories, and mainstream US culture (especially wrt. health and diet).
It was given as a revelation from God[1]. This is not some doctrine that came about from a philospher. It came from the top.
The same revelation discouraged tobacco use, the problems of which wasn't understood until much later. I assume the same will happen with caffeine, tannins, and other coffee/tea things.
1: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-test...
I would argue that this isn't a good forum to discuss the relative merits of outsourcing one's morality to a corporation, nor the merits of closing oneself off to examination of belief in light of conflicting reality, hence the respectful circumspect language earlier.
Regarding your comment here, it would be accurate to say it is currently enshrined by a small group of Utah-based religions and metacultures as divine and potentially even protective, and no one else really cares if said adherents drink or don't drink coffee. What isn't in doubt is that coffee and tea are healthier than soda, and that said Utah-based religious schisms allow Koreans and other East Asian areas to drink tea (along with South Americans to drink Yerba Mate) in contravention to their doctrine, so any alleged health benefits from adherence clearly isn't the focus and outward manifestation of obedience is the goal for the malleable rule.
Other groups that have health codes that have a good physical basis:
- Seventh-day Adventism, ~22 million, Vegetarianism encouraged, no alcohol, tobacco, or caffeine
- Islam, ~2 billion (Sunni + Shia), No pork or alcohol; fasting during Ramadan; ritual slaughter
- Judaism, ~15 million, No pork or shellfish; no mixing meat/dairy; specific slaughter methods Holiness, cultural cohesion, obedience to God’s law
- Sikhism, ~26 million, No alcohol, tobacco, or drugs; vegetarianism in some sects; uncut hair (kesh)
- Rastafarianism, ~1 million, Vegetarian or vegan, no alcohol, processed foods, or salt; often no caffeine
- Jainism, ~4–5 million, Strict vegetarianism, often no root vegetables, no alcohol
- Hare Krishna (ISKCON), ~1 million+, No meat, eggs, fish, onions, garlic, or caffeine; food must be offered to Krishna
- Baháʼí Faith, ~5–8 million, Abstain from alcohol; annual 19-day fast (sunrise to sunset)
- Brighamite Mormonism (LDS), ~3-5 million (regular attending), abstain from coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco; no longer adhering to low meat consumption or beer (encouraged, not considered a strong drink, circa 1825 liquors like whiskey were considered ills, wasn't until Prohibition in the 1930s that Brighamites added alcohol to banned list, and the 1960s/1970s entrenched through gatekeeping entrance for secret rituals, causing some ritual center managers to not be able to get their annual renewal)
> My mother was from Utah, and she always lamented at the small size of her flowers growing up in Chicago. They are much larger in Utah because they can get big without insects eating them.
Counter-anecdote from a Utah local: every time we travel to a "wet" area (any travel but Arizona / Nevada) we always find the climate to be more verdant and flowery. Perhaps ecosystems are more multi-faceted in nature.
Counter-counter-anecdote: Our Roses love the weather here.
Just moved to Utah (wife's job was relocated here) a couple of years ago after many decades in the southeast and midwest. Some stuff grows like crazy here, some stuff doesn't.
Nothing in the continental US competes with the gulf coast when it comes to sheer masses of flowering vegetation. Everything is green and most of it flowers. Everywhere you look, there's actually really neat and beautiful plants. But most of it is what folks think of as "weeds". Non native stuff in yards (what people think of as "flowers") often struggles. E.g. yapon is native and is often an ornamental and it'll grow like crazy, or even worse, try planting some Mexican petunias... I love those things, but they are a purple swarm that will swallow everything.
But plant your daffodils, and while they'll grow, they get overpowered and outspread by everything native. A lot of common ornamentals can't take the fully saturated then dry cycles and clay soils, too. Then there are the bugs. Everything gets eaten by something. So so so so so many bugs.
But in Utah, those common ornamentals absolutely thrive _if_ they get water. When you irrigate here, things grow like crazy. Flowers are huge and there are basically no bugs here at all. (I don't count box alder beetles or brine flies as "lots of bugs".)
But native vegetation can survive the actual climate here, while most ornamentals can't without extra water.
That's interesting, it's something I haven't really thought about.
There is some desire for less caffeine as it adds bitterness. Eugenioides, a parent species to arabica the commonly cultivated species, inherently has less caffeine and is said to have a remarkably sweet cup. It's had some attention in barista competitions in the last few years.
Eugenioides is sweet in a way that no other coffee I ever had is sweet.
You sometimes see "sweet" as an axis of flavor of coffee, or as a tasting note on a bag of fancy beans; but eugenioides is very different.
It's _the_ dominant note in that cup, and it is much less fruity or floral, it's just... sweet. You taste the sweetness, and then the rest of the "typical" coffee notes come in the background, but much less pronounced than usual.
I've seen people describe it as a "cereal-like", and while I don't think I fully agree with that description, I do get where they're coming from.
If you're a coffee person and ever see a bag of it on offer (and can afford it), I definitely recommend grabbing it — it's really, really unique (and quite rare!).
(And I do not think this is in any way related to the caffeine content — otherwise most of decafs would be very sweet, and they obviously aren't).
When you say sweet, is that because the coffee has more sugar, or are there just other compounds?
I guess what I’m asking is what’s the difference between what you’re describing and making a regular good cup of coffee and adding a teaspoon of sugar?
It's the "other stuff"/flavor compounds, definitely.
I don't think brewed coffee contains any meaningful amounts of sugar?
Coffee (filter/brewed, not espresso) is ~98.5% water by weight, even if the Eugenioides species has more sugar in the beans than Arabica (it might! literally no idea here) — if the difference would be "just" down to the sugar levels, I don't think it would be noticeable at the dilution levels we're talking about.
The difference in the natural sweetness vs adding sugar is an interesting question, honestly!
Sugar is usually added to coffee to hide/mask/round out the bitterness; whether naturally occurring or from overly developed roast. But it also masks/drowns out other notes, too. You'll get less bitterness, but less of the acidity, the floralness, of all the other subtleties that can make coffee great — you'll get _sugar_ sweetness (and it's a very different kind of sweetness than coffee can naturally have!), and less of everything else.
Eugenioides is different because it just doesn't have that baseline note of bitter/hashness _at all_, and it's naturally pretty sweet.
Instead of sugar, I think the "magic berries" (I never tried!) that mess with your bitterness perception might work better? I'm actually now curious to try it out...
Ah, so that's why they don't drink much coffee in Utah. I thought it was because of some Broadway musical!
As a daily coffee drinker I wouldn't mind less caffeine in coffee. I drink coffee for its flavour (and have tried dozens of different coffees from many different roasters). I have tried some decafs but they just taste different and generally much flatter. They also behave very strangely in my espresso machine, requiring a much finer grind to sustain brewing pressure. From my limited understanding of decaf processes, they all remove more than just caffeine, so the effect on flavour is unavoidable.
The biggest reason decaf brews, tastes, and grinds so different is the processing essentially causes the beans to expands (so you can extract the caffeine out of the center of the very dense, green coffee) and then you need to dehydrate them back to the proper moisture content for roasting. You take a green coffee that is previously extremely dense and non-porous, and make it much much more porous. This leads to roasting difficulities and brittleness when grinding which seems to lead to fines.
I'd agree, less caffeine in the bean without decaffinating would lead to a better tasting coffee (if you want the lesser caffeine).
Huh. As an avid home coffee roaster, this is interesting to learn. I find that decaf also really struggles to “crack” when roasting, and emits way less smoke. I guess that’s because there’s perhaps nothing left to really crack anymore?
This makes sense! The coffee has expanded a lot from the decaf process so it's not going to expand as much during roasting, hence no "crack" (which is really the same kind of process as popcorn popping)! The reduced smoke may be due to the removal of the skins and residual dried fruit which would have been washed away along with the caffeine, whereas I would expect a natural process coffee to produce a lot more smoke (compared to the most common washed process coffee).
Less-so that it has expanded from the decaf process, and more-so that the additional porosity leads to the 'crack' you get from reaching that critical temperature is much less violent, since there's essentially already many micro-fractures in the bean. Think of it like attempting to burst a pipe with a leak in it, vs. a pipe that is sealed. The leak will bleed off pressure, so you need much more flow (in coffee roasting, this would be power from heat) to get the same build up and explosion.
https://youtu.be/iGL7LtgC_0I?si=V8vXK4QzF_lAfRjB
James Hoffman did an interesting episode on this bean a few years ago, very cool the work being done.
Robusta is doing just fine... https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2024/08/coffee-is-threa...
If, as the article says, you like instant coffee, then great.
Robusta is great if you don't go with the low quality stuff. Good quality Vietnamese Robusta is very enjoyable (and much higher in caffeine than Arabica, which I think is a nice bonus).
There's also the possibility of hybridizing Robusta and Arabica to get the best traits of both. A few hybrid varieties, such as Catimor, have existed on the market for a while. AFAIK Catimor has some of the hardiness of its parent Robusta.
As always, you'll have the best experience if you buy whole beans and grind them yourself (or at least find a supermarket that lets you grind beans fresh). No instant coffee that currently exists will be able to compete with that.
Vietnam seems to like it, fine. Pretty popular in France and Germany, too. If you have ever had Bustelo, then you've had it.
Liberica, which is already popularized in Malaysia, is another type of coffee that’s resistant to heat and droughts.
I’m introducing some plants to a rural community in Panama that had its Robusta crops ruined by the harsh summers we’ve experienced over the past couple of years.
I've had some bags of liberica recently and it is very interesting. A lot of vanilla, overshadowing all other flavors. I prefer arabica, but I am also 100% for ending the arabica/robusta monocrop in favor of more coffee species. It certainly enriches coffee culture!
> In Asia and Australia, people tend to prefer tea.
Maybe, but Taiwan and Australia have some of the best coffee these days.
As an Australian i thought that was weird since we clearly favor coffee and have a very proud coffee culture so i looked it up.
Turns out that statement is completely false. We drink more coffee than tea which matches my anecdotal experience.
https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1399769/australia-regular...
Yeah, the 'flat white' espresso/milk drink which is now sold all over the world is from Australia.
I guess coming up with a new drink that appeals to people enough to go global happens easier in a place with a coffee culture.
As a Swede who enjoys the occasional flat white: thanks, Australia! :)
Not to mention Vietnam and Indonesia, which are the second and third largest coffee producers in the world.
Caffeine mgs for various brewed extracts can be lower than a cup of coffee. Even decaf still contains <.002mg, remain static over the designated beverage half-life. For third-wave, light roast blooms, containing more acid, the caffeine content is punctuated.
This is a beautiful read into the history and novelties of coffee. I'd love to taste stenophylla some day
Other coffee beans is intriguing. Often it's very obvious as to why Arabica won our hearts, though! A while back I tried a coffee bean called Racemosa. The beans are like tiny little pellets, and when you drink it your eyes will widen and go.. "WOW. HGRRRGH. EW. HMM.. INTERESTING. OK, NOT COFFEE AS WE KNOW IT."
What a refreshing piece of long form journalism.
What puzzles me about the reported birth of coffee is that I wouldn't expect that just eating the cherries would give you that much of a caffeine kick to be noticeable. Yes, there's a little bit of caffeine in them, but far more in the "beans" (seeds).
Tea also has noticeably less caffeine than coffee, yet it has been treated as an energizing drink since it was first discovered.
When you don't have any adrenal stimulants in your diet at all, even a small amount is noticable.
Caffeine also has a metabolic half life of roughly 5 hours in the body, if I remember correctly. A few berries might not do much, but surely a handful will be enough.
Tea bushes use an entirely different metabolic pathway to produce caffeine than coffee bushes.
Here is an article that further describes how we believe caffeine synthesis evolved in multiple land plant lineages.
https://www.pnas.org/content/113/38/10613
Caffeine synthesis involves several enzymes, but the enzyme family (called the SABATH family) involved in the final stages of its synthesis can trace its origins back to the first land plants. These first enzymes are thought to have been very promiscuous (capable of having activity with several molecules), partially contributing to how caffeine synthesis managed to evolve independently multiple times throughout the evolutionary history of land plants.
Tea leaves usually have more caffeine than coffee beans, but tea itself is usually more diluted than coffee.
If you want a jolt, make a matcha shot with the same mass of matcha as you would normally do for coffee ;)
Or a traditional Maté
Somehow caffeine from Maté feels different though. To me coffee gives a fast spike and then comedown, while Maté's effect is more balanced, and lasts longer. And I don't think it's just caffeine content, because tea is nothing like that for me.
For staying productive for hours, nothing beats Maté for me (except stimulant medication).
This is why I routinely wean myself from coffee by drinking tea on most holiday weekends. I feel it helps me to dissociate less while I should be present with family, plus when I return to work I have much less residual caffeine and can hit peak productivity, crank out some code. Props to devs who don’t rely on drugs!
We’re probably used to higher levels of caffeine now, but if we weren’t, maybe chewing the berries would give a noticeable boost.
Kinda like ok you can eat a poppy but then there’s a reason morphine exists. (Sorry for the stupid analogy ;)
If you truly detox from caffeine even extremely small amounts will be noticeable. I knew a woman who couldn't eat chocolate because she found the amount of caffeine to be too high. I didn't even know there was caffeine in chocolate.
> I knew a woman who couldn't eat chocolate because she found the amount of caffeine to be too high.
I think the causality went the other way in that case. I've been roughly caffeine free at certain intervals. Never felt anything from chocolate.
Depends on the chocolate type and how much you're eating. Milk chocolate has very low levels (~2mg per 28oz), but dark chocolate is ~15mg per 28oz. Coffee, at 24oz, would be around 275mg, depending.
I find it hard to believe that some folks would feel the caffeine in chocolate unless they ate an entire dark chocolate bar in one sitting, but I suppose it's possible.
You might want to double-check your figures.
Ghiradelli claims their dark chocolate has 20mg per oz and their milk chocolate has 6 mg per ounce. [1]
That would mean eating a standard 3.5oz/100g chocolate bar would have 70mg of caffeine for dark, or 21mg for milk.
While 3.5oz is a lot in a sitting, 70mg is equivalent to a smallish cup of coffee.
[1] https://www.ghirardelli.com/product-faqs#:~:text=Dark%20choc...
I think that 28oz of dark chocolate, whether weight or volume, would be a ludicrous amount to eat in one sitting. A chocolate bar is about 1.5 oz (and 1 fluid ounce of water weighs 1 ounce, at least to a rough approximation), so to eat 28 you'd need to eat nearly 20 chocolate bars.
For that matter 24oz is rather a lot of coffee to drink at once. I brew my daily coffee with 200g of water, or only about 7 floz.
While I realize I'm an outlier, I do NOT consider 24oz of coffee a lot, nor does anyone I know--that's literally a standard coffee cup at a coffee shop these days. At a minimum, I'm drinking 3 pots (~180oz) of coffee a day, with my usual being 3-4x that amount.
So; with that said, while I believe that eating 28oz of chocolate is a lot, I guess it could happen :-)
Wait, on a typical day you're drinking 4-5.5 gallons of coffee? 180oz * 3-4? So 540-720oz?
That's not just an outlier, that's absurd. At 100mg caffeine per 8oz of coffee, that's over 6 grams of coffee per day, or more than 15 times the amount generally considered safe.
Not to diminish the outlandishness, but I think the parenthetical is misapplied.
(3 pots of coffee) is about (180 oz).
But the comment also said "with my usual being 3-4x that amount". I don't know how to square the math in that comment except to interpret it as "180oz is my minimum, my usual is 3-4 times as much as 180oz".