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Coffee before donating blood: a drink helps, and one small trial suggests caffeine might too
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Independent editorial · since 2025
Your honest guide to life beyond coffee.
Mushroom coffees, chicory, herbal roasts, matcha, and everything people try when regular coffee stops working for them. We test every drink, read the studies, and won't tell you your favorite brand is best if it isn't.
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Ingredients
What is chaga? The black fungus in many mushroom coffees, and the kidney case reports behind its one real warning
If you’ve looked at mushroom coffee, you’ve seen chaga on the label. It sounds like a trendy wellness ingredient, and the usual write-ups either rave about i...
Health
Does coffee protect against dementia? Pooled studies disagree, and the cohort-only analysis found no clear effect for coffee
If you’re quitting coffee and a relative has dementia, you’ve probably seen a headline saying coffee protects the brain and wondered if you’re giving somethi...
Health
Does caffeine make restless legs worse? Sleep guidelines say check it first, but the studies of coffee drinkers don't agree
If your legs get fidgety and uncomfortable in the evening, it’s natural to wonder about the afternoon coffee. Sleep specialists do list caffeine as something...
Recent reviews
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Reviews
Teeccino French Roast review: the closest-to-coffee herbal coffee we've tried
I have reviewed a lot of herbal coffees. Most of them disappoint in the same way: they’re reasonable herbal drinks, but they taste nothing like coffee, and m...
Reviews
Ryze Mushroom Coffee review: lower caffeine, real mushrooms, fair price
Ryze is currently the best-selling direct-to-consumer mushroom coffee in the US. It’s worth evaluating on its own terms rather than on the marketing-adjacent...
Reviews
MUD\WTR Rise review: the best-tasting mushroom coffee we've tried
We tested MUD\WTR Rise against three other mushroom coffees (Ryze, Four Sigmatic, Om) in a blind taste panel. MUD\WTR won on taste by a clear margin. It was ...
Why we write this site
Most of us end up on a coffee-alternatives search because something changed: a bad night of sleep, a new medication, a pregnancy, a health scare, or just the creeping sense that the fourth cup isn't doing what the first one used to. The web has plenty of listicles selling the alternatives — far fewer that help you understand them.
We write for the reader in the middle of it: tired, curious, a little skeptical, looking for someone who's actually tried the thing and can say whether it lives up to the claims. We include the products we think are worth trying, we disclose the ones we earn a commission on, and we never rank something first because of a payout.
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