Usually when you have coffee at Mugg & Bean you get a small placemat under your cup with a “conversation starter”. See picture on the left. Yesterday I got one with the question “Why is Coffee an Aphrodisiac?” … Now, this is an interesting topic. I never really considered coffee as aphrodisiac but rather an stimulant. My personal experiments showed having a lot of black coffee slows down my mind and I tend to think & analyze deeply. I do not skip thoughts. Upon the question, Yuram instead asked from what word is aphrodisiac derived. For the curious the word is derived from aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure & procreation.

Back to the initial question … I came home and googled to find out, is coffee really aphrodisiac? I went through a few pages and the best I found is:

Coffee — like any caffeine-rich food — stimulates the body, which is why it’s usually mistaken for sexual arousal.

Indeed, coffee is rather an stimulant than aphrodisiac. At my workplace I often drink aphrodisiac tea as well. That doesn’t have anything to do with arousal either. In fact, it is another stimulant just like coffee. Why this stimulant at work? When incidents, questions and loads of stuffs are shot at you … you can see them coming in slow motion. You get time to think, analyze and then act.

If you’d be interested in some more reading, have a good time with the links below :

http://www.eatsomethingsexy.com/wordpress/aphrodisiac-foods/coffee/ http://www.askmen.com/sports/foodcourt/56b_eating_well.html http://www.slashfood.com/2006/01/25/caffeine-might-be-an-aphrodisiac-for-some/