Getting started
Coffee before a breathing test: caffeine is a mild airway opener, so the instructions usually say skip it
The short answer
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.
Start here →AI-generated photograph · image policy
Start with the question you came with
164 researched answers →Featured reading
All articles →
Health
Does coffee cause gallstones? Studies of coffee drinkers point the other way, and the decaf result is the odd one
If you’ve heard that coffee is hard on the gallbladder, the research doesn’t back that up. Studies that follow coffee drinkers over time have mostly found fe...
Health
Does coffee lower your diabetes risk? Big studies say yes, small trials say a cup nudges glucose up, and the sugar in the cup matters
Coffee drinkers get type 2 diabetes less often than non-drinkers, and that pattern has turned up in dozens of studies. Yet small trials that hand people a cu...
Health
Is coffee good for your liver? The studies are consistent, including for decaf, and still not a reason to start drinking it
Coffee drinkers have less liver disease than non-drinkers, and that finding keeps turning up across very different studies. It is one of the more consistent ...
Recent reviews
All reviews →
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.
No email list yet — we'd rather not take your address until we can actually use it. New articles go out on the RSS feed.