Q 01/05

Caffeine keeps you awake mainly by blocking the receptors of which sleep-promoting molecule?

A) Adenosine

B) Serotonin

C) Dopamine

D) Histamine

Answer · why

A) Adenosine

Adenosine builds up in the brain the longer you stay awake and makes you drowsy; caffeine is shaped enough like it to sit in its receptors without swi...

Q 02/05

In the legend of coffee's discovery, the Ethiopian herder Kaldi saw which animals turn frisky after eating the berries?

A) Goats

B) Sheep

C) Donkeys

D) Cattle

Answer · why

A) Goats

Goats: in one telling Kaldi took the berries to a nearby monastery, where the abbot brewed them into a drink to stay awake through the long evening pr...

Q 03/05

Which composer wrote a comic 'Coffee Cantata' about a daughter who refuses to give up her coffee habit?

A) George Frideric Handel

B) Antonio Vivaldi

C) Georg Philipp Telemann

D) Johann Sebastian Bach

Answer · why

D) Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote it in the 1730s, when he led the ensemble at a Leipzig coffee house; the daughter yields when her father threatens she wil...

Q 04/05

Which South African herbal tea is naturally caffeine-free?

A) Guayusa

B) Kombucha

C) Rooibos

D) Yaupon

Answer · why

C) Rooibos

Rooibos comes from a South African shrub in the pea family, not from the tea plant, so its leaves hold no caffeine at all.

Q 05/05

Why do plants such as coffee and tea make caffeine in the first place?

A) As a natural pesticide against insects

B) To survive long droughts

C) To make their leaves taste sweet

D) To store energy for winter

Answer · why

A) As a natural pesticide against insects

As a natural pesticide against insects: at the doses found in the plants it puts bugs off feeding and can kill them, a defence so useful that coffee a...