How healthy is your coffee?
Greek coffee could be good for the heart, one recent research study suggests. Could all coffee be as healthy?
Macchiato, cappuccino, flat white, long black, latte, espresso - for coffee drinkers, there is a myriad of choices out there.
Everyday billions of us choose to overlook or embrace its addictive properties and down our caffeine hit, or hits, as the case may be.
But chances are, we are not choosing to drink it due for its health benefits. Or are we?
"I've never believed there is anything bad in drinking five cups a day," says Will Corby, a coffee "hunter" or specialty coffee merchant with Mercanta - The Coffee Hunters, and trainer at the London School of Coffee.
Get your fix:
Caffeine is such a powerful stimulant, people are known to have overdosed on espressos, and drinking too much has been associated with negative health effects, such as insomnia, jitteriness, diuresis and headaches.
Will Corby says quality is key. He can drink 20 cups of excellent coffee while judging, with no side effects. But what happens when he has three badly-brewed ones?
"I drink a lot of coffee, and I drink a well-brewed cup. I have no problems sleeping. But if you drink a badly-brewed cup, it has a bad effect on you," the coffee expert says.
In fact health research over the years has found good things in a cup of coffee - most recently in Greek-style coffee.
The coffee consumption of elderly people on the Greek island of Ikaria was linked to a reduction in one risk factor for heart disease according to a study in the Vascular Medicine journal.
Is Greek coffee special?
It is brewed in a stove-top pot known as a briki, and is very strong, with a heavy foam, and can be brewed with sugar to increase sweetness. It is also served with a glass of water.
Greek coffee is brewed in a "briki" and contains high amounts of anti-inflammatory compoundsBrewed coffee is the richest in caffeine content (135mg per 8oz (227g) of coffee), the study reports, more than filter coffee (112mg) or percolated (74mg).
Greek coffee also contains a greater amount of anti-inflammatory organic compounds.
There have been plenty of studies over the years which show positive and negative health effects after drinking coffee.
That is explained in part by the lack of consistency in what we drink say experts.
Milk and sugar
Different roasts, species and varieties of coffee beans can have different caffeine contents and compositions too.
There is also added sugar, sugar syrups, milk and cup sizes so there are differing levels of caffeine but also of other ingredients, like proteins, fats and sugars.
On the plus side, coffee is known to be packed full of antioxidants, which stop other molecules oxidising and producing free radicals.
Women who drink two or more cups of coffee a day are less likely to get depressed, other research suggests.
There are plenty of reasons to love it, but perhaps the simplest are the taste, and the "lift" it gives to drinkers.
Brew it the best way:
- Grind your coffee fresh
- Use the right dose of coffee for water - weigh it and stick to 72g of coffee for 1L water
- Use water at the correct temperature - 96C
- Make sure the grind size is correct - it should take 3 - 3 1/2 minutes for water to pass through the coffee
- Buy a hand grinder with ceramic burrs to ensure even coffee particles and an even extraction of caffeine
For as Will Corby says: "Coffee is one of the most complex flavour profiles on the planet, it has about double the flavour range in it of wines.
"The chemical structure gives you more flavour and it is full of caffeine, it wakes you up and gives you a buzz."
However previous studies have linked high caffeine intake to raised cholesterol and short-term high blood pressure.
In recent times however there has been a sea change in the debate over whether coffee is good for you or bad for you.
A recent study by the Harvard School of Public Health suggests there is no link between coffee and mortality.
Even drinking up to six cups a day "is not associated with increased risk of death from any cause, or death from cancer or cardiovascular disease", says Rob van Dam, assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.
"This finding fits into the research picture that has been emerging over the past few years: For the general population, the evidence suggests that coffee drinking doesn't have any serious detrimental health effects," he says.
Regular or large?
Yet the experts still warn against drinking too much. As in most research, the Harvard study assumed six 8-ounce (225ml) cups, each containing 100mg of caffeine, "not the 16 ounces (450ml) you would get in a grande coffee at a Starbucks, which has about 330mg of caffeine," says Rob van Dam.
But his findings are backed up by a study in the Maturitas journal, conducted by the University of Valencia in Spain.
It concludes that "information gathered in recent years has generated a new concept of coffee, one which does not match the common belief that coffee is mostly harmful".
How much is too much?
People with high blood pressure and pregnant women are advised to limit their consumption.
- A mug of instant coffee contains 100mg caffeine
- A mug of filter coffee contains 140mg caffeine
It says: "Contrary to previous beliefs, the various forms of arterial cardiovascular disease, arrhythmia or heart insufficiency seem unaffected by coffee intake. Coffee is associated with a reduction in the incidence of diabetes and liver disease.
"Protection seems to exist also for Parkinson's disease among the neurological disorders, while its potential as an osteoporosis risk factor is under debate."
Psychologically and socially, coffee also has another benefit arguably on our mental health.
"If you look at European culture people go out and switch on when drinking coffee, while alcohol makes people lethargic," says Will Corby.
"Coffee is a means to communicate. It's why people love coffee, it aids social interaction," he explains.
The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) has 5,000 members and recently held its Symposium, an international meeting of experts.
The SCAA's director Peter Giuliano suggested caffeine is useful in connecting people, as well as different areas of our brain, as shown in a University of California San Diego Department of Psychiatry study.
Despite the good news, many of those conducting the research say it "must be stressed that much still needs to be known".
Most clinical studies, particularly those with high numbers of participants, are only observational.
Time for a caffeine fix then.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/0/22167586
18 April 2013 Last updated at 01:13
Coffee and qahwa: How a drink for Arab mystics went global
The Arab world has given birth to many thinkers and many inventions - among them the three-course meal, alcohol and coffee. The best coffee bean is still known as Arabica, but it's come a long way from the Muslim mystics who treasured it centuries ago, to the chains that line our high streets.
Think coffee, and you probably think of an Italian espresso, a French cafe au lait, or an American double grande latte with cinnamon.
Perhaps you learned at school that the USA became a nation of coffee drinkers because of the excise duty King George placed on tea? Today ubiquitous chains like Starbucks, Cafe Nero and Costa grace every international airport, and follow the now much humbler Nescafe as symbols of globalisation.
Coffee is produced in hot climates like Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Vietnam and Indonesia, and you could be forgiven if you thought it is a product from the New World like tobacco and chocolate. After all, all three became popular in Europe at more or less the same time, in the 16th and 17th Centuries.
In fact, coffee comes from the highland areas of the countries at the southern end of the Red Sea - Yemen and Ethiopia.
Although a beverage made from the wild coffee plant seems to have been first drunk by a legendary shepherd on the Ethiopian plateau, the earliest cultivation of coffee was in Yemen and Yemenis gave it the Arabic name qahwa, from which our words coffee and cafe both derive.
Qahwa originally meant wine, and Sufi mystics in Yemen used coffee as an aid to concentration and even spiritual intoxication when they chanted the name of God.
Continue reading the main story
Three courses, and alcohol
- The Arabs invented the concept of the three-course meal, with soup followed by fish or meat, then fruit and nuts - the habit was brought across to Moorish Spain in the 9th Century from Iraq
- Alcohol may have been distilled in c800AD by Jabir Ibn Hayyan from Kufa in Iraq, and our word "alcohol" derives from the Arabic "al kuhul"... many Arab countries, like Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Morocco, make wines and beers, even though Islam does not permit the drinking of alcohol
By 1414, it was known in Mecca and in the early 1500s was spreading to Egypt from the Yemeni port of Mocha. It was still associated with Sufis, and a cluster of coffee houses grew up in Cairo around the religious university of the Azhar. They also opened in Syria, especially in the cosmopolitan city of Aleppo, and then in Istanbul, the capital of the vast Ottoman Turkish Empire, in 1554.
In Mecca, Cairo and Istanbul attempts were made to ban it by religious authorities. Learned shaykhs discussed whether the effects of coffee were similar to those of alcohol, and some remarked that passing round the coffee pot had something in common with the circulation of a pitcher of wine, a drink forbidden in Islam.
Coffee houses were a new institution in which men met together to talk, listen to poets and play games like chess and backgammon. They became a focus for intellectual life and could be seen as an implicit rival to the mosque as a meeting place.
Some scholars opined that the coffee house was "even worse than the wine room", and the authorities noted how these places could easily become dens of sedition. However, all attempts at banning coffee failed, even though the death penalty was used during the reign of Murad IV (1623-40). The religious scholars eventually came to a sensible consensus that coffee was, in principle, permissible.
Coffee spread to Europe by two routes - from the Ottoman Empire, and by sea from the original coffee port of Mocha.
Both the English and Dutch East India Companies were major purchasers at Mocha in the early 17th Century, and their cargoes were brought home via the Cape of Good Hope or exported to India and beyond. They seem, however, to have only taken a fraction of Yemeni coffee production - as the rest went north to the rest of the Middle East.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
End QuoteThe coffee which is native to the Gulf is bitter and sometimes flavoured with cardamom or other spices”
Coffee also arrived in Europe through trade across the Mediterranean and was carried by the Turkish armies as they marched up the Danube. As in the Middle East, the coffee house became a place for men to talk, read, share their opinions on the issues of the day and play games.
Another similarity was that they could harbour gatherings for subversive elements. Charles II denounced them in 1675 as "places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers".
A century later Procope, the famous Parisian coffee house, had such habitues as Marat, Danton and Robespierre who conspired together there during the Revolution.
At first, coffee had been viewed with suspicion in Europe as a Muslim drink, but around 1600 Pope Clement VIII is reported to have so enjoyed a cup that he said it would be wrong to permit Muslims to monopolise it, and that it should therefore be baptised.
Austrian coffee drinking is said to have received a big boost when the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683 was broken, and the European victors captured huge coffee supplies from the vanquished.
Perhaps that is why, to this day, coffee is served in Vienna with a glass of water - just like the tiny cups of powerful Turkish coffee with its heavy sediment in Istanbul, Damascus or Cairo. Is this just a coincidence, or a long forgotten cultural borrowing?
Viennese cafes serve it with a glass of water
The beverage we call "Turkish coffee" is actually a partial misnomer, as Turkey is just one of the countries where it is drunk. In Greece they call it "Greek coffee", although Egyptians, Lebanese, Syrians, Palestinians, Jordanians and others do not seem to care overmuch about the name.
Continue reading the main story
10 borrowed Arabic words
- The word cheque comes from the Arabic word saqq, and reflects the sophistication of finance in Arab countries in the early middle ages
- The word algorithm is derived from the name of Abū Abdallah Muḥammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi whose name (al-Khwarizmi) is, in Latin, Algoritmi
- Cipher comes from Arabic sifr, meaning "zero, naught, nothing"
- The word for cotton derives from the Arabic qutn
- Ghoul is an Arabic word for "a desert demon which can appear in different forms and shapes; an ogre or cannibal"
- The English magazine is a word borrowed from the Arabic makhzan, meaning "storehouse"
- Nadir has its origin in Arabic nazir, indicating "opposite, facing, parallel"
- Tamarind refers to Arabic tamr hindi, literally meaning "Indian date"
- The word safari has its root in the Arabic word safar, which means "journey"
- Tariff comes from Arabic ta'rif, which means "notification" or "definition"
But there are other coffee drinking traditions in the Arab world. The coffee which is native to the Gulf is bitter and sometimes flavoured with cardamom or other spices.
It is often served a decent interval after a guest has arrived - to serve it too soon might be an impolite suggestion of haste - and then once again before departure.
It often comes just before or after a small glass cup of black, sweet tea. The order in which the two beverages are served varies, and seems to have no significance. What is remarkable for a Western visitor is the idea that the two very different drinks should be offered in such quick succession.
Sadly, however, while coffee has gone truly global production has declined in Yemen, the victim of cheap imports and rival crops like the narcotic qat.
In 2011, Yemen exported a mere 2,500 tonnes although there are attempts to revive cultivation of the best coffee in its original home. Today, none of the Arab countries is listed among the world's significant producers.
John McHugo is author of A Concise History of The Arabs
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22190802
Last Updated: Tuesday, 14 August 2007, 13:44 GMT 14:44 UK
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6945697.stm
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