“I fail to follow your conclusion that “it isn’t a taste issue”. Your evidence is that most people cannot tell the difference by flavor, and yet still demand on their daily coffee.

Doesn’t that lead to a conclusion that the taste is more of the issue, not less?”

The conclusion is that the ritual gets them going in the morning, not the java.

People skip decaf because they want their jolt not because they don’t like the taste which is often the case with diet sodas. As the waiter said, he can give decaf and they don’t notice. Which means they can’t tell when they have caffeine or not and it tastes just as good.

Taste is part of the ritual while the caffeine experience may be more manufactured at these varying doses.

In high school I took several Vivarin pills to stay awake for an early morning boring class. It didn’t kick in until an hour later and it was awful.

Also if you look at http://www.ampedmind.com/new-researching-on-breaking-habits/ you will see that taste isn’t the reason all people buy popcorn. So even if taste isn’t that great your habits can keep you with it which actually may explain why they don’t notice a change in decaf taste. The habit has taken over.