
Coffee not essential for life, Swiss government says - e2e4
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-47898537
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maxander
If Sweden were cut off from the world and forced to defend itself, I would
hope its defenders wouldn’t simultaneously be fighting caffeine withdrawal.
There’s your strategic justification.

Of course, if Sweden were under serious attack, it would likely mean that
Russia was moving against NATO, and the world would be on the brink of
apocalyptic nuclear war. But you wouldn’t want _two_ problems. :)

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eesmith
(Sweden != Switzerland)

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maxander
Ack! >_<. Thinking about an “European country with a coffee habit,” I guess my
brain was predisposed to think about Sweden.

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saagarjha
> "Coffee contains almost no calories and therefore does not contribute, from
> the physiological perspective, to safeguarding nutrition," the Federal
> Office for National Economic Supply said (in German).

That's true: nobody _needs_ coffee to survive and it doesn't provide
nutritional value. But does that really mean that you can't keep a little on
hand, given how many people enjoy it? This is coming from someone who doesn't
drink coffee, FWIW.

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noego
This is meant to be an emergency stockpile to ward off mass starvation, in
various disaster scenarios. I know it's hard for us to imagine in modern
times, but during desperate situations like war, people literally die of
starvation. When faced with a situation like that, you'll be very glad that
the government elected to store 15,300 tonnes of additional food instead of
coffee.

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saagarjha
I'd still say it's a difficult decision to make: whether you'd like a
significant portion of your country to suffer from caffeine withdrawal and not
be able to function properly, or have some additional people starve 3 months
from the start of the disaster, with would only happen if there was no
additional help and at that point you’re probably not going to get more food
anytime soon…

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solitus
Caffeine withdrawal doesn’t last really long mate. You’ll get a headache 1
afternoon then you go to sleep and it’s gone.

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Simulacra
There are many things not essential to life but add to the overall
productivity, and fulfillment of tasks.

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masonic
I'm counting on my coffee stockpile to be a critical barter item during the
zombie apocalypse.

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zaphirplane
I would love to know what foodie countries like France and Italy are
stockpiling.

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m463
For comparison, MREs have coffee.

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eccles
false

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RandomInteger4
#FakeNews

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eesmith
What's fake?

The BBC article links to the primary reference at
[https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/medienmittei...](https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/medienmitteilungen.msg-
id-74644.html) .

> Kaffee-Pflichtlager in Frage gestellt

> Bern, 10.04.2019 - Der Bundesrat hat am 10. April 2019 die Vernehmlassung
> zur Änderung der Verordnung über die Pflichtlagerhaltung von Nahrungs- und
> Futtermitteln eröffnet. Vorgesehen ist die Aufhebung der Lagerpflicht beim
> Kaffee.

~~~
RandomInteger4
#Woosh

~~~
eesmith
Can you elaborate?

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nilskidoo
Downvoted so hard.

