The myth of espresso

File this under: why won't this go away? People think espresso and automatically think about loads of caffeine. Case in point is a new article at Britain's Daily Mail newspaper:

A teenage waitress overdosed on caffeine after drinking 14 shots of espresso.

Jasmine Willis, 17, could hardly breathe and was taken to hospital with a high temperature and heart palpitations.

She had drunk almost three times the recommended daily amount of caffeine in just four hours.

The article doesn't specifically mention espresso as being stronger than coffee, but the underlying tone is there. I'm glad the article said she OD'd on coffee instead of espresso.

The girl had 14 shots of espresso, which sounds like a lot, but it's really only about 7 cups of brewed coffee, in four hours. One shot of espresso has about half the caffeine of ordinary, brewed coffee. I do this routinely, with no ill affects. The girl's physiology is responsible, not the big, bad espresso.

I constantly hear people say they got a great pick-me-up after drinking a shot of espresso. Nobody gets a pickup after a half cup of 7/11 coffee, and that's about the same amount of stimulant. When I need a pickup, I order four shots of espresso and drink them within two minutes. That wakens me up a little, but it's not a screamer. People who claim one shot does them either weigh 70 lbs. or they're lying (or maybe it's a placebo effect).

Sources:
December 2005 issue of National Geographic (not available online; I'm a subscriber)
NPR
Faqs.org (see section 1.1)