73% of America's Caffeine Is Consumed Before Noon

73% of the caffeine U.S. adults consume lands before noon. Half of it is already consumed by about 8:30 a.m. The biggest hour is 8 a.m. After 6 p.m., 8% is left.

The whole day

Share of U.S. adult caffeine by hour, August 2021–August 2023. The shaded block is everything before noon.

Each bar is one hour, and the shaded block is everything before noon. The 95% confidence interval on that before-noon share is 71–75%.

The numbers come from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the federal dietary recall, for August 2021 through August 2023. People listed what they ate and drank on one day, including the time each item started and the caffeine in it. The estimates are weighted to the U.S. adult population.

Coffee carries the morning

The average adult consumed about 145 mg of caffeine on the recalled day. About 86% of adults had some. Among people who did, the average is about 170 mg.

Coffee accounts for 72% of the caffeine. Tea is about 11%, soda about 12%, energy drinks about 3%, and chocolate about 1%. Before noon, coffee is 86% of the caffeine consumed.

Share of U.S. adult caffeine by hour and source, August 2021–August 2023

From 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., soda and energy drinks together are 35% of the caffeine consumed in those hours. Coffee is still in the stack. The national curve falls because morning coffee is over.

Soda runs later. Energy drinks spike twice.

When coffee, tea, soda, energy drinks, and chocolate are consumed across the day

Each panel sums to 100% of that source. Coffee piles up between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. Soda is the source that keeps going: about a quarter of soda caffeine is consumed before noon, and the rest is spread through the afternoon and evening.

Energy drinks are about 3% of adult caffeine. Most of those milligrams still land in the morning, and the chart shows a second spike after lunch.

A 200 mg can at 2 p.m. sits on the low side of the national curve. Energeia’s caffeine half-life calculator puts a rough estimate on what that means later: with a 5-hour half-life, about half of a 2 p.m. can may still be around at 7 p.m. That is a model, not a reading from your body.

Teenagers drink on a different clock

Share of caffeine by hour for ages 12–17 through 65 and older

At ages 12–17, about a third of caffeine is consumed before noon. The peak is around 6 p.m. Among adults 50 and older, about three quarters is consumed before noon. Ages 18–34 fall in between, with about two thirds before noon.

Coffee is still the largest source of teenage caffeine. Soda is a much larger share at those ages than it is for adults: about 26%, compared with about 12%.

The weekend peak is an hour later

Caffeine timing on Monday–Thursday compared with Friday–Sunday

Monday through Thursday peaks at 7 a.m. Friday through Sunday peaks at 8 a.m. The before-noon share barely moves: about 74% on weekdays and 72% over Friday–Sunday. Friday is grouped with the weekend because that is how this survey balances the dietary sample.

Men and women follow almost the same clock.

How this was counted

The adult figures use 4,983 people age 18 and older with a reliable first-day recall in NHANES / What We Eat in America, August 2021–August 2023. Estimates use the Day 1 dietary sample weight, so the result stands in for the U.S. civilian population.

Caffeine is placed at the time the eating occasion began. Some people sip the same coffee for hours, and those occasions are stamped at the start. Set them aside and 66% of the remaining caffeine is still consumed before noon (95% CI 64–68%). Caffeine pills and energy shots are supplements, so they are outside this file.

The longer version, including the column names and the files, is in How I counted when America drinks caffeine. The CSVs are there too if you want to rerun it.