The Devious Ad Campaign That Convinced America Coffee Was Bad for Kids
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/12/the-devious-ad-campaign-that-convinced-america-coffee-was-bad-for-kids/282676/For most of my life, I've assumed that the grotesque amounts of coffee I began drinking around age 12 to keep up with my nightly homework load had something to do with the fact that I grew up to be a good 2-to-3 inches shorter than my pediatrician predicted. Coffee, as we've all heard, is supposed to stunt a child's growth. And I guzzled it from my tweenhood on.
It seems, though, that I assumed wrong. As Smithsonian's Joseph Stromberg recently explained in great piece of pseudoscience debunkery, the idea that coffee is bad for youngsters was actually a myth first propagated by the early 20th century cereal Tycoon, C.W. Post.
Before he developed his signature breakfast products like Grape Nuts, Post went into business in 1895 selling a cereal-based, caffeine-free coffee substitute called Postum. Now, the words "cereal-based, caffeine-free coffee substitute" might sound about as appetizing to you as a wet wad of newspaper. But Post cannily marketed his product as a health beverage while spooking consumers about the allegedly malign effects of coffee on both adults and children.
Here is how one seemingly skeptical journalist explained the product's success in a 1922 issue of the Magazine of Wall Street:
Not himself a chemist, or a psychologist, or whatever one must be to establish that coffee drinking is harmful, the writer claims no knowledge of whether “Postum Cereal,” as it was called, met a real need, or merely played on a superstition. At any rate, the product proved to have a market. And backed by unceasing, driving efforts on the part of Mr. Post himself, that market was nurtured and developed until it became nation-wide.
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Most children don't want have anything to do with it (similar to beer and wine) and I never encouraged it.
I think these days it is much more popular with students, compared to my day, and the social aspect of coffee takes off at a young age.
Myself, I was a late convert, but due to a number of my friends having health problems with caffeine, I usually go caffeine free. I save the caffeine for when I really need it 
Mainly, she'll stick her finger in it when I'm not looking, stick her finger in her mouth and say "Mmmm, that's tasty!" with that little shit-eating grin of hers
And I drink my coffee STRONG, with just a hint of creamer.
My mother-in-law will let her have a cup of very weak tea when she's watching her though, which my daughter calls "little kid coffee."
On the other hand, she is not allowed to have ANY kind of soda for at least another year, and her intake of sugary juices is almost nil. She gets water, white milk, soy milk, almond milk, and chocolate milk now and then as a treat. Recently she's responded positively to kefir as well.
