>I can't imagine normal healthy people routinely taking a drug and teaching their children to take one. And yet this happens with coffee all the time. Many are even proud of their addiction ("coffee snobs").
It also happens with sugars, salt, corn syrup and tons of other stuff.
Lots of things can be a "drug". Coffee, when drank in moderation, is actually absolutely beneficial to one's health.
I can't speak to salt, but the classic explanation for sugar and high fructose corn syrup is Robert Lustig's UCSF presentation[0]. Midway through he discusses the differences between HFCS and sugar in how they metabolized, including the brain aspects. (Hint: consider the long-term effects of alcohol up there.) Definitely worth the 90 minute investment of attention.
Consuming large amounts of them can cause you to have temporary bursts of pleasure, which then cause you to crave them more when they are missing. Have you never had the experience of eating something salty, and realizing that you craved more, to the point where you ate too much salt? Or had some sugar, and then had a sugar crash a little while later, where you got grumpy until you could have something to eat?
That does not make salt or corn syrup a "drug", which is what brador asked about.
Your definition is so broad as to make the term "drug" meaningless, as it means that even water is a drug. Yes, after swimming in the ocean waves for an hour, cold freshwater is pure pleasure, and if I haven't had enough water for a while I start to suffer from dehydration.
A friend of mine has to eat a small amount every few others, else she becomes irritable. I've sometimes forgotten to eat until the afternoon, with little effect on my personality. Does that mean that food is a drug to her, or that she's more addicted to food than I am?
Obviously not.
Can you come up with a better definition of "drug" which makes makes sense? That is, one where "water" and "food" are not drugs, but for which salt and corn syrup is a drug?
I don't really know. I was explaining the above comment, not agreeing with it.
One of the problems is that we have this value judgement associated with the word "drug." Once you label something a "drug", it acquires a negative connotation.
One thing that distinguishes a drug from something like water is that you actually, physically depend on water; you cannot live without it. You can, however, live without sugar (though of course, your body will break down complex carbs into sugar). You can't live without salt, though there's a wide range between how much you need and how much many people eat.
I hope that "drug" also acquires a positive connotation. Aspirin is a drug. Insulin is a drug. Penicillin is a drug. During pollen season, I reach for my loratadine.
Your definition is one characteristic between a drug and a non-drug, but it doesn't suffice. Meat is not essential, as the various vegetarians and vegans on this planet confirm. Does that make meat a drug? A Google search says that a few dozen people have asked, and answered that in the affirmative.
While Vilhjálmur Stefánsson and others showed that people can survive on just meat and entrails; are vegetables drugs?
I read that. It's one of the worse Wikipedia pages I've come across. Did you see that it cites the same paper twice, with different style for each one?
Anyway, I read the paper. It concludes "we suggest that sugar, as common as it is, nonetheless meets the criteria for a substance of abuse and may be “addictive” for some individuals when consumed in a “binge-like” manner. This conclusion is reinforced by the changes in limbic system neurochemistry that are similar for the drugs and for sugar. The effects we observe are smaller in magnitude than those produced by drug of abuse such as cocaine or morphine; however, the fact that these behaviors and neurochemical changes can be elicited with a natural reinforcer is interesting. _It is not clear from this animal model if intermittent sugar access can result in neglect of social activities as required by the definition of dependency in the DSM-IV-TR_ (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Nor is it known whether rats will continue to self-administer sugar despite physical obstacles, such as enduring pain to obtain sugar, as some rats do for cocaine (Deroche-Gamonet et al., 2004). Nonetheless, the extensive series of experiments revealing similarities between sugar-induced and drug-induced behavior and neurochemistry, as chronicled in Sections 4 and 5, lends credence to the concept of “sugar addiction”, gives precision to its definition, and provides a testable model."
As you can see (assuming my HN markup-foo is strong), sugar has not been shown to (or shown not to) lead to the definition of "dependency" for humans, which is a neglect of social activities. So this remains a conjecture with some supporting evidence, but not enough to make the statement that sugar is or even can be an addictive substance.
Do you have a citation for the "caffeine is healthy" claim? This seems like rationalization to me; as a non-drinker of caffeine, coffee seems like the number one legal drug in the Western world.
There is evidence of a bunch of mild benefits (and also mild risks). I'd currently say it looks like a small net benefit, but with a confidence interval that would include negative territory. In general, it seems reasonable to drink coffee if you like it. It certainly is an addictive drug, though.
Caffeine has been relentlessly studied for evidence of ill effect and, as you know, science publishing is biased toward positive results (so expect to see one positive p=0.05 outcome for 20 studies of a non-effect). I suspect that the puritan streak in our society which suspects that anything we enjoy must have an underlying evil plays a role.
In any event, the evidence of the ills of caffeine is so poor as to suggest a smattering of false positives. The studies showing positive effects should be viewed with similar skepticism, although if it does have some role in preventing Alzheimer's surely that's enough on its own.
It seems to me hard to really say whether caffeine is healthy or not. Rather the modern western lifestyle -- a lifestyle we've agreed to, or accepted, for the most part -- that has very little to do with biological rhythm needs to be evaluated for its health effects. As long as we're going to accept that everyone is going to work long mid-days in unison, sleep 8 hours per night, in unison, etc: then we're going to appreciate aids (fluorescent lights, caffeine, heaters, air conditioners, melatonin, food) that help us conform with everyone else.
Some may not feel they need caffeine as much as others: so be it. But the idea that any of us can really be deemed healthy or not, due to whether or not caffeine is part of the diet, seems to me to lose the forest through the trees
It also happens with sugars, salt, corn syrup and tons of other stuff.
Lots of things can be a "drug". Coffee, when drank in moderation, is actually absolutely beneficial to one's health.