For Sale: Wilco's Own Brand of 'Select' Coffee

Waiter...oh waiter...Please do not serve me whatever Vasu was having...that dude is wired and weird...

if the coffee tastes like the band sounds, it sucks.

It makes sense to abstain from intoxication! The Prohibition of alcohol failed. Whether or not mind-altering substances should be prohibited or legal and regulated with numerous restrictions is a separate issue, subject to serious political debate.

Collegiate excess has repercussions far beyond hangovers and missed classes, and should be of concern to members of the surrounding community. "Binge drinking hurts not only the drinker but also others near him," says Henry Wechsler, Ph.D., a lecturer at the Harvard school of Public Health, where he was also the director of the College Alcohol Study, and author of Dying to Drink: Confronting Binge Drinking on College Campuses.

"The binge drinker disturbs the peace, through noise, vandalism and sometimes violence. Like secondhand smoke, binge drinking pollutes the environment."

"The [social] cost of alcohol is in the billions of dollars. Roughly half the total is related to what's called alcohol addiction," says Paul Gruenewald, scientific director of the Prevention Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, which is funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

"The other half is related to other harms that happen to people when drinking; primarily drunk driving, drunk driving crashes, pedestrian injuries, violent assaults, and various criminal behaviors and various injuries," Gruenewald said.

"It's not a pretty picture. It's quite ugly from the public health point of view. It's a much bigger problem than crime related to illegal drugs," he added.

Alcohol, not marijuana, is the most abused drug in the United States. As of 1983, there were an estimated eight million known alcoholics in America, with the number increasing by 450,000 every year. One survey reported that 75 percent of all crimes and 60 percent of all divorces have drinking in their background. The National Safety Council reports 50 percent of all traffic deaths are caused by drunk drivers.

According to Dr. John MacDougall in his 1983 book, The MacDougall Plan (which advocates a strict vegan diet with no salt, oil, or intoxication), over seven percent of the adult population in the United States suffers from alcoholism, resulting in decreased productivity, accidents, crime, mental and physical disease and disruption of family life. Excessive consumption of alcohol leads to liver disease, cancer, birth defects (fetal alcohol syndrome) and multiple vitamin deficiency diseases.

A report by the World Health Organization states that "Alcohol is a poison to the nervous system. The double solubility of alcohol in water and fat enables it to invade the nerve cell. A man may become a chronic alcoholic without ever having shown symptoms of drunkenness." The conclusion of the report is that nobody is immune to alcoholism and total abstinence is the only solution.

Dr. MacDougall writes that excessive consumption of caffeine leads to an elevated heart rate, irregular heart beat, increased blood pressure, frequent urination, increased gastric secretion, nervousness, irritability and insomnia. Caffeine is known to cause birth defects in animals, and may do the same in humans. Caffeine stimulates the growth of breast cells, causing benign lumps.

Excessive intake of caffeine may cause a rise in blood fats. Cancer of the urinary bladder has been linked to caffeine use and it contributes to loss of calcium from the body. Moreover, the body actually becomes physically addicted to caffeine. Withdrawal symptoms include headaches, drowsiness, tension and anxiety.

Pregnant women who consume caffeine -- even about a cup of coffee daily -- are at higher risk of giving birth to an underweight baby, researchers said. The findings published in the British Medical Journal also linked any source of caffeine, including that from tea, cola, chocolate and some prescription drugs, to relatively slower fetal growth.

The findings are the latest in mounting evidence indicating the amount of caffeine a person consumes may directly impact one's health, especially when pregnant. In January, U.S. researchers found that pregnant women who drink two or more cups of coffee a day are at twice the risk of having a miscarriage as those women who avoid caffeine. Babies born underweight are more likely to develop a range of health conditions when they grow older, including high blood pressure, diabetes and heart problems.

Women who drank one to two cups of coffee daily, or between 100-199 milligrams, had a 20 percent increased risk of having a baby of low birth weight, the study found. This was compared to women who consumed less than 100 milligrams daily.

"Caffeine consumption during pregnancy was associated with an increased risk of fetal growth restriction and this association

Thank you for highlighting the origins of this coffee brand...I can now make an informed decision to pass it over, for a brand that has it's origins in tradition and good taste.