Surprising Reason Decaf Could Face Ban In Michigan

There are a select few people out there who drink coffee for the taste. My dad drinks his coffee black, which is mindboggling, but others drink decaf. Those people are the scariest. Drinking coffee for not even the caffeine, but just to drink it? Makes me shiver.

However, there is a surprising reason that Michigan could see decaf banned from the state.

Coffee is America's most popular drink. Daily coffee consumption is at a 20-year high. It's more popular than water with 67% of American adults having had coffee in the last day. 10% of those drinkers, or about 26 million people, drink decaf. This makes the potential loss of decaf a pretty big deal.

But why is decaf potentially on the chopping block? Well, creating decaf coffee is an entire process. Since coffee beans naturally have caffeine in them, people have to manually remove the caffeine from the drink. This is through a chemical process called the "European Method" which uses a chemical called methylene chloride.

This methylene chloride is what could lead to its ban since the FDA proposed a change to remove the chemical from foods aka anything you consume. On its own, the chemical can be harmful, however current U.S. food safety regulations allow small amounts (the equivalent of 10 drops of water in 10 gallons), but the new change wouldn't allow the chemical at all. This would require an alternative decaffeination method which can be much pricer than the European Method.

Decaf is not especially popular in the Midwest with Midwesterners being least likely to order decaf according to the National Coffee Association. However, the general change could have wide-reaching ramifications. For now, the FDA's proposal is nothing more than that, so your decaf is safe. For a list of alternatives to decaf, check out this list.