Tastour

Yes! Yes Coffee, Please!

According to statistics, over 400 billion cups of coffee are drunk each year, and 91% of coffee consumed is at breakfast-time.

The three biggest coffee drinkers in the world are (in descending order) Americans, French and Germans. These three groups are responsible for nearly 65% of the entire world’s consumption of coffee.

In the United States alone, 400 million cups are consumed every day (or 35% of the world’s total). The statistics show that 54% of the adult population drinks coffee on a daily basis, and another 25% of all Americans drink it once in a while. This means that more than three quarters of American adults drink coffee.

What’s in it for me?

Coffee is a zero calorie drink: good news for those pretending to be on a diet! It also contains important anti-oxidants, and when drinking one or two cups a day, it has some benefits:

If you have post-gym muscle aches, two cups of coffee can alleviate that pain. But this only works on those who are not regular coffee drinkers. Sorry to you coffee fanatics – you’re already immune to this effect!

Coffee also reduces headaches and can help fight asthma, possibly due to the enhanced adrenal effect of the caffeine. Likewise, it reduces the risk of some cancers and Parkinson’s disease. Recent studies have shown that caffeine decreases the incidence of diabetes by 54% for men and 30% for women.

Additionally, coffee’s fat burning potential and stimulant effects are being pushed by the medical field as a means of lowering the incidence of heart disease.

Recently, a study carried out on rats showed that caffeine can actually boost the female sex drive! This may not necessarily be the case for humans, but have you noticed anyone drinking coffee in a bar? One thing you can count on is that coffee will keep you up all night. Whether you study your textbook or your partner is up to you.

Coffee is not only for drinking. If you are shopping for perfume, take some coffee with you in your bag and have a good sniff in between smelling each fragrance. The scent of the beans will refresh your nose! If you are a garden buff, try mixing coffee grounds and sugar with water to feed to your plants. This concoction should revive the plant’s yellowed leaves in the winter!

Lastly, sprinkling ground coffee around the base of your garden plants will protect them from hungry slugs and snails.

Coffee has come a long way from being a goat’s favorite snack hedge. It touches nearly every aspect of life in developed countries, and is a major source of income and a route to an improved standard of living for those in developing countries that depend on coffee exports for their livelihoods. Coffee brings the world together and makes it seem like a much smaller place. So whatever you call it – coffee, café, caffee, or cuppa, be sure to brew enough for the rest of us.

Each morning, you pour the brown beans into the grinder; have you ever thought about what that bean really is? That most beloved brown “bean”, with all that taste and rich welcoming scent, is actually a seed. I (obviously) have too much time on my hands, and have been wondering how the coffee seed was discovered. I’m positive that I’m not alone in this, as there are supposedly legitimate accounts of the discovery readily available via the internet.

I was surprised to learn that the ancestor of the Grande Decaf Iced Mocha was discovered by that most hip of the bearded farm animals – the goat! Back in the 9th century, an Ethiopian goat herder, called Kaldi, noticed his goats acted strangely whenever they ate the cherries from the coffee plant, so he tried one himself. The report doesn’t specify how the cherry made Kaldi feel, but it’s probably safe to say that his goats were well herded that day. This account was only uncovered in the 16th century, when some of the more early written documents were found.

No! No Coffee, Please!

Ready for something truly hard to swallow? Initially, coffee was a wee bit unpopular! In 1511, drinking coffee was banned for 30 years in Mecca by the conservative, orthodox imams. In 1532, after Cairo implemented the same ban, the coffee houses and warehouse stores of beans were raided.

Some time before the 12th century, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church also banned the consumption of coffee due to the widespread belief that it was a Muslim drink. Meanwhile, during the reign of Charles II in Europe (1661-1700), coffee houses were banned in an attempt to stop the ongoing rebellion. This backfired, however, and the ban was never fully enforced. The people demanded their coffee, and I suspect Charles deuce had a jones for the joe as well. Just as coffee started to gain popularity, Fredrick the Great banned the drink in Germany in 1677. Mr. Fredrick the Not-So-Great was concerned about the economic impact of vast quantities of money being spent on coffee. Money spent on goods imported from other countries meant money leaving the country, and even a mug of delicious Nescafé wasn’t worth that to Fredrick. Thankfully, not even the so-called “Great” or the “decaf only, please” religions could keep coffee away.

Records show that by the end of the 16th century there were at least 500 cafés in Istanbul alone, and coffee houses were spreading like wildfire in other countries. Coffee has now become so popular that it is the second most consumed beverage in the world, ranking only below water. It also ranks second to petroleum on the commodity market, amounting to $60 billion dollars a year spent on the importation of coffee beans for our morning brew.