To me it seems the process for decaffeinating coffee might be worse for you than actually drinking the caffeine...

Coffee is decaffeinated by soaking the beans so that the caffeine is extracted from them. But, this process typically takes the flavor of the beans out as well, so there are things to be done that allow the flavor to be infused back in after the caffeine is removed.

There are a few different practices that remove caffeine and reflavor the beans. One is mixing the post soaked water with a solvent to separate the caffeine from the water, one is the activated charcoal or carbon filters, and yet another is to immerse the beans in a steam bath and then in carbon dioxide.

The full process is detailed here at: http://ask.yahoo.com/20060102.html

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