Nasty Battles #4 - Tea vs Coffee
Situation at hand - Those of us who had Economics in high school are very familiar with the concept of 'substitutes'. That is, if I cannot get A then I am happy to stick to B. The most widely used example when we explained 'substitutes' in our exam papers was the so-called alternative between tea and coffee. If the price of coffee beans goes up, we wrote, it's not a problem at all -- we just buy some more tea bags and get on with our lives! The Back-story - After two years of college, which I can safely say were the most caffeine-intensive days of my short life, I can't help but question this concept, because when your assignment is due in eight hours and you've written exactly three words, will a cup of tea do the job? Or when you're having a laid-back hangout with friends after dinner, who wants to gulp down black coffee and stay up all night? So here was the clincher: are tea and coffee really substitutes? And which one do you prefer? N...