Is coffee bad for you? The thing is, a few milligrams of caffeine is probably not enough to affect the majority of people, neurologist and sleep medicine specialist Ajay Sampat, M.D., assistant clinical professor at UC Davis Health, tells SELF. How big a deal a little caffeine actually is And to be fair, the FDA has more pressing concerns when it comes to what’s lurking in the food and drugs we consume. “The FDA believes that.is a good baseline.” (So by that math, a bag of coffee beans that would’ve yielded an eight-ounce cup with 150 milligram of caffeine prior to the decaffeination process would serve up an eight-ounce brew with no more than 4.5 milligram of caffeine.)Īrnold also notes that in cases in which the FDA does not have specific regulations, as with decaf, “we are mostly looking at labels that are truthful and not misleading.” But anyone trying to keep tabs on their caffeine intake for whatever reason will probably want to keep in mind that it’s not as if a regulatory body is testing these things or holding coffee houses or manufacturers to their word. However, “as a general rule, the FDA has not objected to the use of the term ‘decaffeinated’ on coffee if at least 97 percent of the original caffeine has been removed,” Arnold explains.

There are also no regulations specifying the maximum amount of caffeine that coffee can contain in order to be labeled decaf, Arnold says. But it also depends on the technique and intensiveness of the decaffeination process a manufacturer uses, as well as the brewing method and strength, he adds. “How much caffeine is in there by the time it gets to the consumer mostly depends on how much caffeine was present to start with,” which varies with different types of beans and growth regions, Ristenpart says. As with regular coffee, there’s clearly a lot of variability here. Decaf coffee typically only has between two and 15 milligrams per 8-ounce cup, according to the FDA. “So you get diminishing returns.and the last bit is almost impossible to remove.” How much caffeine is actually in decafĪn eight-ounce cup of regular coffee typically has around 95 to 200 milligrams of caffeine, according to the U.S.

This means that once the beans have gone through round after round of decaffeination, the beans contain less and less caffeine, which makes it increasingly more difficult to remove caffeine, Ristenpart says. And the force the solvents can generate decreases as the beans are leached of their caffeine. The amount of caffeine that can be extracted largely depends on how forcefully the solvents can pull those caffeine molecules out, Ristenpart explains. To explain why, let’s talk basic chemistry real quick. Methylene chloride is technically a potential carcinogen, but is present in such minuscule amounts in decaf coffee-at most, 10 parts per million, as regulated by the FDA since 1985-that it is not considered a risk to human health.) Other solvent methods involve drawing out the caffeine using only water (the Swiss water technique), or highly pressurized carbon dioxide (the supercritical carbon dioxide technique). Ethyl acetate is “generally recognized as safe” by the FDA. While those chemicals might sound unsafe for sipping, only trace amounts remain at the end of the decaffeination and roasting process, Ristenpart says. (By the way, if those chemicals sound a tad on the “should-I-really-be-putting-that-in-my-body” side, you can rest easy. Basically, after green coffee beans are harvested and dried but before roasting (which is when they turn brown), they are soaked in a solution containing a solvent, usually methylene chloride or ethyl acetate, which binds to the caffeine molecules and leaches them out.

Davis Coffee Center and professor of chemical engineering at the University of California Davis, tells SELF. There are several methods of decaffeination, with the most common being what are called solvent extraction techniques, William Ristenpart, Ph.D., director of the U.C.

Amount of caffeine in a cup of coffee