Coffee: Good to you Bad For You?

So a guy comes up to me while I'm selling coffee and says...."you have any tea"? I tell him no and he tells me that I should, because there is a seismic shift towards tea drinking, large enough to create entire continents and I need to get with it.  I was waiting for him to tell me 'all the cool kids are doing it'.  But he went one better (or worse).  He said  "People are switching to tea because it has less caffeine". It was time to dispel the tea myth.  Here it goes: Tea contains more caffeine than coffee by dry weight.  A typical serving contains much less caffeine than coffee because tea is normally brewed much weaker.   His muttered response - as he walked away - was the 'adult' equivalent of 'so what'. To me that's what you say when you have nothing to say but - you want the last word.  Whatever.

Caffeine in general is so ninja, the average person doesn't realize that it's in a lot of stuff  - coffee, tea, many cola drinks and over the counter medication.  Yet coffee always  gets accused of being villain because caffeine is most commonly ingested through coffee.

If you are one of those people who drink several cups of coffee daily, you probably wonder what all that coffee is doing to you. ROFL!  Yeah right! If you're one of THOSE people you  probably don't care!  But seriously, is coffee really bad for you, or is drinking coffee just a harmless vice?  Can it be possible that coffee is actually good for us?  Look at the results of some recent research:  .

• There are nutritional advisers who claim that coffee makes us age faster, wears out our adrenal glands, and wreaks unspeakable damage to our cells.

• In some older people, coffee or tea can improve memory and alertness enough to partly offset the effects of aging. 

• Other researchers claim that coffee, especially if it's freshly roasted and ground, is full of antioxidants, and therefore good for us.  Most doctors say that drinking one or two cups of coffee a day is probably not harmful.  And of course there are others who say we ought to avoid caffeine altogether.

•  Caffeine gives brain cells a temporary boost .  But the amount required to improve mental performance is not very high.  Even half a cup of coffee will be enough to give your brain a boost that lasts several hours.  Which is precisely why many of us drink coffee, especially the first thing in the morning.

For those that are wondering where I'm going with this, here it it is, the definitive response to the raging coffee vs. tea question: Drink the d@%n coffee!

Avoid excessive consumption of coffee ( or anything else for that matter). What's excessive? Depends on the individual.  If  four cups of coffee a day makes you  jittery, nauseous, suffer insomnia, kick the dog, cuss out your boss and walk of your job or demonstrate and other extreme behaviors, you should probably cut back on the caffeine. Seriously. You really should.

If you don't suffer from any of the above by your fourth cup....carry on!

 

www.shop.dreamcoastroast.com

Coffee: The Forbidden Fruit in Your Cupboard

Count your blessings coffee lovers. Five hundred years ago, you’d be considered a stone cold criminal.  Long before cigarettes, obnoxious cell phone users, and loud music with filthy lyrics, it was actually none other than coffee that was public enemy no.  1.  Coffee was not only condemned, but outright banned in many countries before becoming the adored treat that it is today.   And being caught with it would have landed you in hot water. 

Coffee met its first opposition not far from where it was cultivated, in the Middle East and Northern Africa.  Not unlike modern Western culture, coffeehouses were the it place to be in the 16th century.  So much so, that Mosques eventually had fairly shoddy attendance, compared to coffeehouses.  By the year 1511, the governor of Mecca had had enough.  He ordered all Meccan coffeehouses to be closed and even paid off two notable doctors to endorse false propaganda about coffee’s health risks.  Around the same time, a crusade to ban coffee in Islamic law was kicked off.  The effort would continue for close to a century.   Coffee received a short-lived justice when the Sultan of Cairo (an avid coffee drinker) decided that no such ban should be made without his approval.  The ban was overturned, and the governor was sentenced to death in the year 1512 for embezzlement.  Sadly, coffeehouses were once again closed by Sultan Murat IV of Cairo during the Ramadan of 1532.  They remained closed until the very end of the century.

Coffee was met with an equal amount of delight and doubt when it reached Europe in the 17th century. The first person said to have brewed the coffee in England was Nathaniel  Conopios, a Balliol College student from Crete.  He was quickly expelled from the University for his “mischief”, but his brewing practices spread like wildfire.  After its popularity had grown, a group of Christian clerics urged Pope Clement VIII to once again prohibit the bean, insisting that it was, of course, the work of the Devil.  The Pope decided that he could not rightfully ban coffee without tasting it first.  After tasting the controversial and delicious beverage, Pope Clement VIII determined that not only was it not the work of the Devil, but that it should be baptized as a Christian drink.  King Charles II of England banned the big-bodied bean just before Christmas of 1675, out of fear that its effects of liveliness and alertness were certain to incite a revolt.  The King got the revolt he was looking for when mass protests ensued in response to the ban.  He reversed his decision on January 8th of 1676.

Over the centuries, coffee has been dogged out, expelled, and dragged through the mud.  Yet it has proved time and time again that it is a hallmark of flavor, sociability, and intrigue, and deserves its place in society.  We coffee drinkers are the descendants of the ancient creed of “give us our coffee and no one gets hurt.”  Brothers and Sisters let us continue to carry the torch.

Website
Email