ABSTRACT
We are the reason that the USA is the world's largest coffee consumer, representing about 20 percent of the world's total coffee intake. We are a nation of caffeine, fast food, coffee shops, and life lived too often at an unrelenting 24-hour-a-day pace. Recent research finds that 83 percent of the USA's adult population drink coffee (Food Manufacturing 2013), and 61 percent drink it every day (Nicholson 2014). Coffee consumption in the USA stretches back to the seventeenth century, but the emergence of the coffee habit and its integration into daily life occurred gradually. By the mid-twentieth century, coffee had deep cultural and historical roots in American society, and was part of American enculturation. From a young age, most children observe adults drinking coffee, or see it being served at public events.
