FACTS OF THE MATTER – Coffee
According to one Legend, coffee was discovered in Ethiopia by a goat herder, who noticed that his goats became hyperactive insomniacs after consuming the plant. By the 15th century, coffee was being cultivated in Yemen, where people gave it the Arabic name qahwa. To maintain control over coffee production, Arab rulers banned the export of fertile beans. The Dutch smuggled out some plants, however, and by the 1600s had begun growing coffee. Soon, much of Europe’s supply came from the Dutch colony of Java – an enduring nickname for coffee.
Coffee Beans are seeds, located in the center of the coffee cherry – the fruit that grows on coffee plants. There are dozens of coffee plant species, but commercial coffees use mainly two: arabica, which represents 70 percent of all coffee sold, and robusta. Robusta has about 50 percent more caffeine that arabica and is often used for instant coffee and coffee blends. The most expensive coffee, kopi luwak, is harvested from the dung of a civet, a nocturnal cat-like animal in Indonesia. The civet eats the coffee cherries, which ferment in its stomach acids. The excreted beans, after cleaning and roasting, can cost up to US$600 per pound.
Worldwide, we drink about 400 billion cups of coffee each year – that’s about 12,000 cups per second. Though Hawaii is the only US state that grows coffee, the nation has explored its own brand of coffee culture. Starbucks began as a single Seattle store in 1971 and now has nearly 20,000 locations in more than 60 countries. In a $4 latte, coffee beans account for about 40 cents of the price.
Centuries Ago, a cup of coffee could lead to a death sentence. Sultan Murad IV, a ruler of the Ottoman Empire, worried that communal coffee drinking would lead to dissent and conspiracies against the government – so he reportedly used a broadsword to lop off the heads of anyone who drank coffee in public. Coffee now has a more favorable reputation, for its health effects. In one study, people who drank four cups daily were about 10 percent less likely to develop depression, compared with those who drank no coffee. Other research suggests that increased coffee consumption may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes, and that coffee could improve circulation in small blood vessels, possibly leading to better heart health. When scientists fed bees nectar containing caffeine, which occurs naturally in coffee plant flowers, the bees were three times more likely to remember a flower’s scent than those that received sugar instead.
In 2013, a converted Ford pickup became the world’s fastest coffee-powered vehicle. It has an onboard stove that heats coffee bean hulls until they breakdown into carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which powers and engine that can propel the truck up to 65 miles per hour.
Facts of the Matter – Coffee
S.A. Swanson from the Rotarian, August 2014