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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A reader wrote in after reading our piece on why the afternoon crash hits some people harder than others, which mentions in passing that “pregnancy and certain medications, including some oral contraceptives” can slow caffeine clearance. She wanted to know:...
Ask most parents what worries them about their teenager and caffeine, and they picture a coffee habit starting too early — a 16-year-old ordering a latte, ma...
A reader who tried the caffeine-free coffee jelly recipe asked a follow-up worth its own answer: does the same swap work for dalgona, the whipped-coffee drin...
Most of the plants in this category earned the word “coffee” in their name because someone, somewhere, roasted and brewed them as a substitute for the real t...
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...
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...
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 ...
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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