To add another anecdote to the scientific discourse: when eating out with my parents in bygone days, they’d often have a cup of coffee after meals, and I doubt they were the only ones. They did have weird beverage habits in general - it was policy in our home when I was growing up not to have beverages with meals, only afterwards (I rebelled against this ridiculous doctrine by my early teens).
Lately Mrs. J. and I have gotten into the habit of occasional after-dinner coffee (ours is strong, defying steretypes about Americans). It doesn’t affect my sleeping much, though the diuretic effect may manifest.*
TV shows or movies back in the day with people drinking coffee are easier to take than ones featuring everybody, especially at parties, puffing away on cigarettes with dense clouds of smoke floating around the room, or in bars/nightclubs.
*speaking of which, a popular figure in detective fiction-type literature, Jack Reacher, must be an all-time coffee drinker by volume. Yet he hardly ever needs to use a restroom. Go figure.
Getting back to television, one big reason why tv shows - and movies - used coffee so much is that it gave actors something to do with their hands. Smoking did the same. Moreover, pouring coffee for others worked like lighting cigarettes for others; it allowed for interaction between characters rather than having them just sit there and deliver lines. Also, asking them to stay for coffee (or for other drinks) was a way to prolong a scene naturally, when normal procedure would have characters leaving.
The Actors Place has a list of “50 ideas of possible hand gestures as well as some ideas about what you can do with props such as a pen, mug, or cell phone.” It’s a big deal for a small thing.
I tend to think of coffee as something that is served after dessert. The overall impression I have is that it’s a way to stretch out the socializing (or dragging it out if you’re an introvert like me). One starts with drinks, then an appetizer, then the main course, then dessert, then coffee - after the dessert, not with it. This is how it’s still offered at some of the more upscale Mexican restaurants that I’ve eaten at.
As far as movies and TV, another data point is the movie Clue, which takes place in the 50s. After dinner, Wadsworth offers the guests fruit or dessert. When they decline that, he then offers them coffee or brandy. Had they accepted dessert, presumably the coffee would have been served as another course after dessert rather than with it.
My in-laws had a pot of coffee on all day long. Usually percolated, but later on they switched to a drip machine. Folgers, always. They made it very weak - it was just as likely to put you to sleep as to wake you up.
My husband told me that once, as a boy, he woke up with a headache around midnight. He came out to this parents who were up late watching TV, and his mother made him a cup of coffee before putting him back to bed. And not for any pain-relieving qualities.
In modern-day TV shows and movies, disposable coffee cups seem to serve the same purpose…though it amuses me when you see an actor gesturing with the cup in hand, in a way which makes it evident that it’s an empty cup.
Based on findings from the US Department of Agriculture, coffee consumption peaked in 1946, with Americans drinking an average of 46.2 gallons per year (a weird way to measure coffee consumption, I know, but still better than the amorphous “cup” found in many modern scientific reports); in 2005, that number had dipped to 24.2 gallons.
The Guardian places the blame on two major factors: the rise of soft drinks and Americans working fewer hours. In the ‘50s, around the start of coffee’s decline, soft drinks began to skyrocket in popularity. The alternative caffeine source, and one that is served cold at that, is believed to have cut into coffee’s overall market share.
You’d think they’d at least put some sand or something in it so the weight is about right. Even setting aside the lack of splashing when you or I doing the same thing would have coffee running down our arm, sometimes the inertia is just all wrong.
Like so much else about the unreality of TV production, until you see it, you don’t see it. Once you do see it, it can’t be unseen, and now you see it often.
A number of years ago, my siblings and I chanced to reconnect with a cousin we hadn’t met before. At least, she may have seen some of us as babies but we had no memory of her. We took her out to lunch one day to socialize. My siblings and I were in our 20s and 30s and ordered such frou frou fare as salads, wraps, etc. Our 89 year old cousin ordered a steak and black coffee.
Caffeine is a powerful drug. Scientists gave hard drugs like LSD and meth to spiders and they still functions. When they dosed them with caffeine they could not weave a web. My father drank coffee all day including hot summer days and evenings after supper. I think he got his body used to it in the army in WW-2
My parents drank Chock Full o’Nuts (or, if decaf, Sanka). That’s what I drank, as a kid, too (half milk, half coffee now and then). It was better at the NYC lunch counters, but fine from the can. I don’t remember if they drank it in the evening.
As an adult, my roommate preferred Cafe Bustelo, so I switched to that. Also pleasant enough. Then I made just enough money to splurge now and then at the local roaster. Although I now live in the Pacific Northwest, I still enjoy Wickenden Street Blend from The Coffee Exchange in Providence, Rhode Island. I normally switch to tea at about 2 PM, but I don’t think caffeine makes much difference in my sleep.
I’ve tried to drink coffee, but unless it’s just that I have never tried good coffee I can’t stand it, even loaded with cream and sugar. I’m very sensitive to bitter flavors to the point where I can’t eat green vegetables unless they’be been cooked beyond recognition.
Smokers can tolerate some pretty nasty tasting coffee. I’m convinced the good stuff didn’t become readily accessible in the US until a critical mass of nonsmoking adults was achieved.
See this snopes article. While it’s true that there was a 1995 NASA article published about the effect of different drugs on spider web creation, the linked image did not appear in that article. It was fabricated based on some images that did appear in the article as well as images from other non-NASA studies. The LSD image in particular did not appear in the NASA study but in a 1957 article published in Gravure, a fashion journal, of all places, and the NASA study did not include LSD testing.
