Caffeine sparked the American Revolution and Americans have been enjoying this ingredient found in a variety of foods and beverages ever since. Today we are just a fraction of the billions of people around the globe who safely consume caffeine in some form every day.

While caffeine may have been made famous by the Boston Tea Party, the ingredient predates our nation’s founding by centuries. According to an article from the Daily Meal, “The earliest archeological evidence of tea consumption dates from the second century B.C.”

Americans enjoy an array of other drinks that contain caffeine, such as coffee and energy drinks. Mainstream energy drinks differ from coffee, however. Most mainstream energy drinks contain about half the caffeine of a similar sized cup of coffeehouse coffee. And according to the Daily Meal, these drinks “account for two percent of all caffeine consumption in the country.”

Having been around for centuries, caffeine is one of the most comprehensively studied ingredients in the food supply. So feel free to consume caffeine in moderation. After all, as the Daily Meal points out, “Humankind has had a long time to get used to caffeine.”