15 STAYING HEALTHY DRINKING IT
Poison vs. panacea
Science weighs in
Decaffeinated coffees
When Sir William Harvey, the seventeenth-century physician credited with discovering the circulation of the blood, was on his deathbed, he allegedly called his lawyer to his side and held up a coffee bean. “This little Fruit,” he whispered, eyes doubtless still bright from his morning cup, “is the source of happiness and wit!” Sir William then bequeathed his entire supply of coffee, fifty-six pounds, to the London College of Physicians, directing them to commemorate the day of his death every month with a morning round of coffee. To those who hang out in health food stores, this anecdote may strike a sinister note. Did Sir William die young? How much coffee did he drink, and did he have any enemies in the College of Physicians?
PANACEA OR POISON
Contradictions run throughout the history of coffee. Coffee was first consumed as medicine and graduated to serving simultaneous roles as panacea and poison. Early in its history, coffee was adopted by Arabian dervishes to fortify religious meditation. Yet no more than fifty years later, in Mecca, it was the subject of vehement religious persecution on the grounds that it encouraged mirth and chess playing among the faithful. Religion still cannot make up its mind about coffee; Mormons and some fundamentalists reject it, whereas most Muslims and many Christians consider it a sober and wholesome alternative to wine and spirits.
In seventeenth-century Europe, as religion began to give way to science and priests to doctors, the debate continued. One physician claimed coffee relieved dropsy, gravel, gout, migraine, hypochondria, and cured scurvy outright, whereas another declared that coffee drunk with milk caused leprosy. “The lovers of coffee used the physicians very ill when they met together,” says one wonderfully detached French observer, “and the physicians on their side threatened the coffee drinkers with all sorts of diseases.”
The Virility Issue
One of the most famous accusations leveled against coffee came in a tale by a seventeenth-century German traveler, Adam Oelshlazer, in his Relation of a Voyage to Muscovie, Tartary, and Persia. The story concerns the king of Persia, who “had become so habituated to the use of coffee that he took a dislike for women.” One day the queen saw a stallion being emasculated; upon asking the reason, she was told the animal was too spirited and was being gelded to tame it. Whereupon the queen suggested a simpler solution would be to feed it coffee every morning. This story, when introduced into southern France, was said to have virtually ruined the coffee trade there for fifty years. On the other hand, a tale from a Persian saga reports that after the prophet Mohammed had his first cup of coffee (delivered by the archangel Gabriel), he “felt able to unseat forty horsemen and possess fifty women.”
Rumsey’s Cure
It was in England of the seventeenth century that coffee’s career as medicine reached its apex and, possibly, its nadir. The most extravagant claims were launched for its medicinal value, and the most extraordinary accusations were leveled against it. One Englishman named Walter Rumsey invented an “electuary” of coffee, to be applied internally with the aid of an instrument called a provang. The electuary was prescribed for intestinal disorders and hysteria. First, you prepared the electuary, which consisted of heated butter, salad oil, honey, and ground coffee. Next, you introduced the provang, a thin, bone rod about a yard long with a little button on the end, into the intestinal tract by way of the rectum and manipulated it vigorously. Finally, you swallowed the electuary and concluded the treatment with a second energetic application of the provang. Perhaps it was at this point in history that tea began to replace coffee as England’s favorite beverage.
THE VILLAIN UNCOVERED: CAFFEINE
Out of all this confusion and debate came the world’s first scientific analysis of coffee. In 1685, Dr. Philippe Sylvestre Dufour described the chemical constituents of coffee with some accuracy and, apparently through numerous experiments on human beings, arrived at the same conclusion every other researcher has come to since: Some people can drink coffee comfortably and some cannot. Dufour even found a few who slept better after drinking coffee than they had before, probably because, in Dufour’s words, the coffee “relieved their disquiet, and removed their feeling of anxiety.”
Dufour also helped the critics of coffee identify for the first time their true enemy: the odorless, bitter alkaloid called caffeine. The average cup of American-style coffee contains about 100 to 150 milligrams of caffeine; a properly prepared demitasse or single serving of espresso 80 to 120 milligrams. The average cup of tea delivers about 40 milligrams; the average chocolate bar about 20 to 60. A 12-ounce bottle of cola drink contains 40 to 60 milligrams, about half as much as a cup of coffee.
The current conclusions about the short-term psychological and physiological effects of caffeine are not so different from the first conjectures by Arab physicians or the findings arrived at by Dufour in the seventeenth century. But the long-term effects are not nearly so well understood and remain the subject of a vigorous, confusing, and thus far inconclusive medical debate.
Short-Term Effects of Caffeine
The short-term effects of caffeine are well agreed upon and widely documented. A good summary appears in The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics by Dr. J. Murdoch Ritchie. On the positive side, caffeine produces “a more rapid and clearer flow of thought” and allays “drowsiness and fatigue. After taking caffeine one is capable of greater sustained intellectual effort and a more perfect association of ideas. There is also a keener appreciation of sensory stimuli, and motor activity is increased; typists, for example, work faster and with fewer errors.”
Such effects are produced by caffeine equivalent to the amount contained in one to two cups of coffee. According to Dr. Ritchie, the same dosage stimulates the body in a variety of other ways: heart rate increases, blood vessels dilate; movement of fluid and solid wastes through the body is promoted. All this adds up to the beloved “lift.”
On the negative side are the medical descriptions of the familiar “coffee nerves.” The heavy coffee drinker may suffer from chronic anxiety, a sort of “coffee come-down,” and may be restless and irritable. Insomnia and even twitching muscles and diarrhea may be among the effects. Very large doses of caffeine, the equivalent of about ten cups of strong coffee drunk in a row, produce toxic effects: vomiting, fever, chills, and mental confusion. In enormous doses, caffeine is, quite literally, deadly. The lethal dose of caffeine in humans is estimated at about 10 grams or the equivalent of one hundred cups of coffee. You would have to drink the hundred cups in one sitting, however, which doubtless accounts for the unpopularity of caffeine as a means of taking one’s own life.
Simple Moderation
It would seem that the resolution to the caffeine debate, at least in terms of short-term effects, is simple moderation. Drunk to excess, coffee literally verges on poison; drunk in moderation, it is still the beloved tonic of tradition, a gentle aid to thought, labor, and conversation.
But just how much is enough and how much is too much? No study will commit itself. I can only offer an estimate based on inference. I have never found a study reporting negative effects from doses of caffeine under 300 milligrams a day. Since the average cup of coffee (or single serving of espresso) contains about 100 milligrams of caffeine, we would infer from this evidence that anyone should be able to drink about three cups of coffee a day and enjoy the benefits of caffeine with none of the drawbacks. Such a figure assumes, of course, that you do not also consume quantities of cola drinks, chocolate bars, and headache pills. This is a conservative estimate, however. We could infer from other studies that five cups a day is safe for most people. Furthermore, reaction to caffeine varies greatly from individual to individual; some people cannot consume any amount comfortably.
One way coffee can contribute to healthy, strong bodies: Workers load coffee in the port of Medan, Sumatra.
Long-Term Effects of Caffeine
So much for the short-term effects. Researchers in the last thirty years or so have tried to implicate coffee, specifically the caffeine in coffee, in heart disease, birth defects, pancreatic cancer, and a half-dozen other less publicized health problems. So far, the evidence is, at most, inconclusive. Clinical reports and studies continue to generate far more questions than answers, and for every report tentatively claiming a link between caffeine and disease, there are several others contradicting it.
If anything, the medical evidence currently is running in favor of exonerating caffeine rather than further implicating it in disease. Some evidence even points to modest, long-term health benefits for coffee drinkers.
A Warning Withdrawn. One example of the way the medical establishment has tended to seesaw on caffeine, condemning on partial evidence then backing off on further evidence, is the purported connection between heavy caffeine intake by pregnant women and birth defects. In the mid-1970s, experiments indicated that the equivalent of 12 to 24 cups of coffee (or equivalent bottles of cola) per day may cause birth defects—in rats. Although human beings metabolize caffeine differently from rats (and other researchers had questioned some of the conditions of the experiments), the United States Food and Drug Administration issued a widely publicized warning about the possible ill effects of caffeine on the fetus. Subsequently, an analysis by Harvard researchers of coffee drinking among 12,000 women early in their pregnancies failed to find a significant link between coffee intake and birth defects. The upshot of the debate? The official position, if there is one, came from a committee of the National Academy of Sciences, which recommended what common sense dictates, what this book recommends, and what coffee lovers through the ages have argued: pregnant women, according to the NAS committee, should exercise “moderation” in their intake of caffeine.
Reassuring Results. Similar controversies have accompanied the purported links between coffee and fibrocystic breast disease, high blood pressure, and pancreatic and lung cancer. On the positive side, an eleven-year study of nearly 17,000 Norwegian men and women found that, once the effect of smoking had been eliminated from the data, people who drank coffee had lower than normal rates of cancers of the colon, kidney, and skin. Norwegian researcher Erik Bjelke’s report to the 13th International Cancer Congress concluded, “While we cannot exclude the possibility that high coffee intakes may enhance carcinogenesis under special circumstances, overall, the results are reassuring.” Two similar long-term studies of large samples of individuals, the kind of studies medical researchers call “population” studies, indicated no consistent association between coffee drinking and blood cholesterol levels (a study of 6,000 men and women reported by the Framingham Heart Study researchers) or between caffeine intake and heart attacks and stroke (a study of 45,000 men aged forty to seventy-five by Dr. Walter Willett and colleagues of the Harvard School of Public Health).
As for the possibility that coffee, in modest ways, may actually help us live healthier and longer, one population study reports that those among a group of 87,000 female nurses who drank two cups of coffee per day were 66 percent less likely to take their own lives than those who drank no coffee whatsoever or, curiously, those who drank equivalent volumes of tea. Those who drank more than two cups of coffee per day were even less likely to kill themselves. And, something for male readers: A study conducted by researchers at Harvard University found that men who drank two to three cups of coffee per day had a 40 percent lower incidence of gallstones than those who did not drink coffee regularly. Men who drank four or more cups per day had a 45 percent lower incidence.
Nevertheless, Talk to Your Doctor. However, opinions on how to interpret the medical evidence on coffee differ, and important new studies appear regularly. Anyone who drinks regular caffeinated coffee and also is pregnant—or takes tranquilizers, or suffers from ulcers, high blood pressure, or heart complaints, or is experiencing benign breast lumps (fibrocystic breast disease)—should certainly bring his or her coffee-drinking habits to the attention of a physician for evaluation.
COFFEE AS SCAPEGOAT
In light of the continuing conflicts in the medical evidence, why have so many people, at least until recently, been so eager to pin blame on coffee? Partly, I think, because of the frustrations of dealing with degenerative diseases with multiple causes, such as heart failure.
There is a tendency in the face of our impotence before certain diseases to cast about for dietary scapegoats. Coffee is ideal for such a role, not only because it has no food value, but because it makes us feel good for no reason when we drink it. When we get sick, I suspect we tend to fix the blame on something we already feel guilty about: coffee, wine, chocolate cake, or whatever.
The ease with which the early persecutions of coffee on religious grounds modulated into condemnations on medical grounds makes the motivation behind popular attacks on the healthfulness of coffee doubly suspect. Every culture or religion has its dietary taboos as well as its sacraments. Certain foods are holy, and others are forbidden. A group that wishes to define its own identity must establish taboos.
Caffeine Was Not Holy. In the late 1960s, for example, an entire generation was busy trying to define itself as a culture distinct from the larger Western tradition. It was inevitable that coffee, as a social drug firmly identified with the establishment, should come under attack. I recall, for instance, visiting a commune where, in the late 1960s, ingesting caffeine was a spiritual and dietary sin almost as bad as closing the door to undress. Yet these same puritans, so critical of caffeine, regularly reduced themselves to monosyllabic incoherence with marijuana. Caffeine was taboo; marijuana was close to holy.
Dietary choices, particularly of nonnutritive, mood-altering frills like coffee, are arbitrary choices driven by culture and habit rather than by reason. But since we live in an ostensibly rational society, no one feels comfortable justifying dietary prejudices on religious or cultural grounds. Instead we elevate some very tentative medical evidence into dogma, which we then defend as “scientific.” One upon a time foods were bad for the soul; now they are bad for our health.
Virtually every element in our diet is currently suspect on some medical grounds or another. At a time when the average glass of drinking water is suspected of harboring carcinogens, a once country-pure herbal tea like sassafras was taken off the market because it contains a proven carcinogen, and large doses of vitamin C have been suspected in birth defects, I see little medical reason for not drinking moderate amounts of a beverage against which nothing concrete has been proven, which has been consumed for centuries without decimating the population, and which is one of the few widely consumed modern foods that contains no multisyllabic preservatives, additives, or other adulterants.
Loving Attention. For the ordinary coffee drinker, the real solution to the coffee and health issue may be treating coffee with the love and attention it deserves. If you are aware of what you are doing when you buy and make coffee and take a moment to appreciate the results, many of the alleged negative effects of coffee drinking might vanish. If anyone suffers from coffee, it is the unconscious coffeeholic who wanders around all day holding a half-filled cup of cold, tasteless instant or a badly prepared, lukewarm triple latte.
DECAFFEINATED COFFEE
Technology is always trying to give us back the garden without the snake. So you like coffee and not caffeine? Well, then, we will take out the caffeine and leave you your pleasure, intact.
Decaffeinated coffee is indeed without venom. It contains, at most, one-fortieth of the amount of caffeine in untreated beans. Nor should the removal of caffeine alter the taste of coffee. Isolated, caffeine is a crystalline substance lacking aroma and possessing only the slightest bitter taste. Its flavor is lost in the heady perfumes of fresh coffee. So if you hear people say, “Coffee doesn’t taste like coffee without the caffeine,” they are wrong. The only real problem is how to take out the caffeine without ruining the rest of what does influence coffee flavor. But technology has triumphed, more or less. The best decaffeinated coffee, freshly roasted and ground and carefully brewed, can taste so nearly the equal of a similar untreated coffee that only a tasting involving direct comparison reveals the difference.
Unfortunately, fine decaffeinated coffees are the exception rather than the norm. Decaffeinated beans are notoriously difficult to roast, so even the best decaffeinated beans may produce a thin-bodied, half-burned cup once they are roasted. Still, for the coffee devotee, even listless decaffeinated coffee is better than mint tea, and you can always compromise and spruce up a caffeine-free coffee by adding a little full-bodied caffeinated coffee before grinding it, or by creating your own low-caffeine blend.
Most caffeine-free coffee sold in specialty stores is shipped from the growing countries to decaffeinating plants in Europe or Canada, treated to remove the caffeine, then redried and shipped to the United States.
DECAFFEINATION METHODS
Coffee is decaffeinated in its green state, before the delicate oils are developed through roasting. Hundreds of patents exist for decaffeination processes, but only a few are actually used. They divide roughly into those that use a solvent to dissolve the caffeine, those that use water and charcoal filters, and those that use a special form of carbon dioxide.
Decaffeination Methods Using Solvents
The direct-solvent method is the oldest and most common decaffeination process. On coffee signs and bags it is typically not identified at all or called by various euphemisms such as European or traditional process. The beans are first steamed to open their pores, then soaked in an organic solvent that selectively unites with the caffeine. The beans are then steamed again to remove the solvent residues, dried, and roasted like any other green coffee.
A more recently developed process called the indirect-solvent method starts by soaking green beans in near boiling water for several hours. The water is transferred to another tank, where it is combined with a solvent that selectively absorbs most of the caffeine. The caffeine-laden solvent is then skimmed from the water, with which it is never really mixed. The water, now free of both caffeine and solvent, still contains oils and other materials important to flavor. In order to restore these substances to the beans, the water is returned to the first tank, where the beans reabsorb the flavor-bearing substances from the water.
What About the Solvents? The joker in the process is still the solvent. People concerned about the effects of coffee on their health obviously are not going to feel comfortable purchasing a product containing even minute traces of solvent. In 1975, one of the most widely used solvents, trichloroethylene, was named a probable cause of cancer in a “Cancer Alert” issued in 1975 by the National Cancer Institute.
The alert addressed the potential health hazards trichloroethylene posed to people who work around it rather than to consumers of decaffeinated coffee, since only extremely minute traces of the solvent remain in coffee. The Unites States Food and Drug Administration, for example, permits the solvent in quantities up to 10 parts per million in ground coffee. By comparison, the doses that the National Cancer Institute administered to laboratory animals were gargantuan. To match them in equivalent terms, a human being would have to drink 20 million cups of decaffeinated coffee a day over a lifetime.
Also, no one knows how much of the solvent residue—if any—is retained in the brewing process and ends up in the cup. Given the volatility of the solvent and the relatively minuscule amount left in the bean after roasting, I suspect that none whatsoever ends up in the coffee we ultimately consume.
A New and Better Solvent: Methylene Chloride. Nevertheless, the news that the caffeine that some feared caused heart disease was being replaced by a solvent that actually did cause cancer provoked understandable consternation among health-conscious consumers.
The coffee industry promptly responded by replacing trichloroethylene with methylene chloride, a solvent not implicated in the National Cancer Institute study. So far tests of methylene chloride have not linked it to any known disease, and given its volatility (it vaporizes at 104°F; coffee is roasted at over 400° for at least fifteen minutes then brewed at 200°) it seems hardly possible that any of the 1 part per million occasionally found in the green beans could end up in the consumer’s cup or stomach.
An Even Newer and Better Solvent: Ethyl Acetate. Now in use in some European decaffeination plants, ethyl acetate, like methylene chloride, has not been implicated in any diseases, and environmentalists consider it more benign than methylene chloride. Because ethyl acetate is derived from fruit, some publicists and brochure writers have taken to calling coffees decaffeinated using ethyl acetate “naturally decaffeinated,” and you may see them so advertised.
The Solvent-Free Swiss Water Process
In the 1980s, the Swiss firm Coffex S.A. developed a commercially viable decaffeination process using water only—no solvents whatsoever. As in the direct solvent or solvent/water process described earlier, the various chemical constituents of the green coffee, including the caffeine, are first removed by soaking the beans in very hot water.
In the Swiss Water Process, however, the water is stripped of its caffeine, not by a solvent, but by percolation through activated charcoal. (It really ought to be called the Swiss Charcoal Process.) The beans are returned to the hot water, where they reabsorb the remaining, caffeine-free flavor constituents from the water.
This process is more costly than the solvent process because the separated caffeine cannot be recovered from the charcoal and sold separately, as it is with the two solvent methods. It is also controversial in terms of flavor. Many coffee professionals contend that the Swiss Water Process blurs flavor more than the competing solvent processes. However, the management of the Canadian plant that currently produces all of the Swiss Water Decaffeinated coffees sold in North America continues to make determined efforts to refine and improve the process.
Decaffeination Methods Using Carbon Dioxide
Decaffeination processes using carbon dioxide (CO2) differ in their details. All take advantage of the fact that carbon dioxide, when compressed, behaves partly like a gas and partly like a liquid and has the property of combining selectively with caffeine. In the most widely used CO2 process, the steamed beans are bathed in the compressed carbon dioxide and the caffeine is removed from the carbon dioxide through charcoal filtering, just as it is in the water-only process. However, the flavor components remain in the bean throughout the process, rather than being soaked out and then put back in again, as they are in both the Swiss Water and the indirect solvent processes.
Since carbon dioxide is the same ubiquitous and undisputably “natural” substance that plants absorb and humans produce, and since, in most versions of the CO2 method, the flavor components remain safely in the bean throughout the process rather than being removed and put back in again as they are in the Swiss Water Process, carbon dioxide methods would seem to be the decaffeinating wave of the future. However, coffees decaffeinated by the CO2 method have been slow to come onto the specialty market, and reviews have been mixed.
Buying Decaffeinated Coffees
If you are concerned only about health issues, I suggest that you buy the decaffeinated coffee that tastes good to you, regardless of process. Given the temperature at which all currently used solvents evaporate, I do not think that enough of the chemical could possibly survive the roasting and brewing processes to be anything more than the tiniest pea under the health-conscious consumer’s mattress.
If, however, you are concerned about the environment, there is good reason to avoid coffees decaffeinated by methods using methylene chloride. Choose instead coffees decaffeinated by the Swiss Water method, by solvent methods using ethyl acetate, or by CO2 processes. Coffees decaffeinated by the Swiss Water method are always so labeled. If no decaffeination method is indicated, or if the method is called European or traditional, you will have to make inquiries.
Decaffeination Method and Flavor
Which decaffeination method produces better tasting coffees? It is difficult to say for certain for two reasons. First, it is virtually impossible to turn up the identical coffee decaffeinated by a range of different methods, and the quality of the original coffee obviously influences the quality of the final cup. Second, decaffeinated coffees are difficult to roast properly, and subtle differences in decaffeination method may be overwhelmed by differences in the quality of the roast.
Nevertheless, my own experience clearly and consistently indicates that the Swiss Water Process tends to emphasize body, deemphasize acidity and high notes, and occasionally (but not always) alter or blur flavor, whereas the European or solvent method tends to preserve acidity, nuance, and high notes, but may reduce body and dimension. As for coffees processed using the CO2 method, I have tasted some excellent samples but not enough of them to generalize.
Other Alternatives for Caffeine-Shy Coffee Drinkers
Of course, if you simply want to cut down on your caffeine intake, rather than eliminating caffeine from your diet completely, there are alternatives other than decaffeinated coffees.
One is to drink less coffee while focusing on enjoying it more. This is a good tactic for people who consume too much coffee at work out of habit or reflex. Rather than drinking the coffee from the automatic coffeemaker or urn, for example, make your own coffee carefully in a small plunger pot, focusing your attention on the act of brewing and drinking.
You can also buy coffees that are naturally low in caffeine. As I indicated earlier, specialty and other high-quality coffees contain considerably less caffeine than cheaper commercial coffees. Most inexpensive commercial blends are based on robusta coffees, which contain almost double the amount of caffeine as arabica. So if you drink a specialty coffee, you are probably consuming considerably less caffeine per cup than if you were drinking a cheap, canned coffee.
Or you can brew your coffee differently. The cold-water concentrate method (see here) reduces caffeine, acidity, and fats. Unfortunately, it also reduces flavor. Coffee brewed with paper filters may contain slightly less caffeine than coffee made by other methods and definitely less fatty oil.
Lastly, you can amuse yourself making low-caffeine blends by combining decaffeinated coffees with varying amounts of distinctive, full-bodied, untreated coffees. Kenyas, Yemens, the best Ethiopias, and Guatemalas, for example, all pack enough flavor and body to spruce up even the drabbest of decaffeinated beans.
ANOTHER SUSPECT: ACID
Caffeine is only one of the villains in the coffee controversy. Another is certain chemicals often lumped together under the term “acid.” Some people do not like the acid or sour note in coffee and claim it upsets their stomachs. Others say it causes jitters. I suggest that you experiment. Does that sourness in coffee make your tongue or stomach feel uncomfortable? Then you have three alternatives:
• Try to find a coffee with the acid reduced through a process much like the ethyl acetate solvent decaffeination process. These coffees, treated in Germany, are marketed under the name “special mild coffees.” They are hard to find, do not offer much choice, and suffer from the same potential for flavor diminution as decaffeinated beans.
• Buy a moderately dark to dark-roast coffee. Dark roasting reduces the acidity in coffee.
• Buy a lower-altitude, naturally low-acid coffee brought to a moderately dark roast (full city, Viennese, light espresso). To me, this is by far the best solution for acid-shy coffee drinkers. Naturally low-acid coffees include Brazils, most India and Pacific (Sumatra, Timor, Hawaii) coffees, and most Caribbean coffees.
It also helps to buy very good coffee because the best coffee has been processed from ripe coffee fruit, and coffee from ripe fruit is naturally sweet and lacks the sharp, astringent sensation of cheaper coffee processed from less-than-ripe fruit.
COFFEE AND HEALTH CONCERNS
Concern |
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Where discussed |
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Possible Responses |
Fears concerning the long-term negative impact of caffeine on health |
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Studies of long-term health risks associated with moderate consumption of caffeine range from inconclusive to reassuring. |
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Drink less coffee and enjoy it more; drink less coffee and drink higher quality coffee; drink coffee brewed by the cold-water concentrate method; drink decaffeinated coffee. |
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Fears that solvent residues from decaffeination processes may contaminate brewed coffee |
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Amounts of residue detected in green coffee decaffeinated by current solvent methods are so low that they hardly bear consideration. The possibility that any of these very volatile substances survive the roasting and brewing processes is highly unlikely. |
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Stop worrying and enjoy your decaffeinated coffee; go back to caffeinated coffees and practice one or more of the expedients listed above; drink wateronly, Swiss Water Process decaffeinated, or CO2-process decaffeinated coffees. |
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Fears that dioxin residues from bleached filter papers may contaminate brewed coffee |
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Most filter manufacturers have switched to whitening methods that do not use dioxin. |
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Trust that whitening processes currently in use are dioxin-free; switch to a brewing method that does not use paper filters; buy brown, unbleached filters. |
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Fears that residues of agricultural chemicals may contaminate brewed coffee |
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Given the cumulative impact of the roasting and brewing processes, it is extremely unlikely that any of the small amounts of residue legally allowable in green coffee actually reach the cup. Environmental concerns are much more significant than health concerns. |
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Drink coffees that have been certified organically grown; drink traditionally grown coffees from Yemen, Ethiopia, and the Mandheling region of Sumatra. |
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Fears that propylene glycol used in flavored coffees is not natural and may pose a health threat |
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Propyline glycol has long been on the generally recognized as safe list of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; it is used in numerous other foods. |
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Stop drinking artificially flavored coffees and start either adding natural flavorings to coffees yourself or drinking distinctive-tasting, single-origin coffees like Yemen, Kenya, or Ethiopia Yirga-cheffe. |
PESTICIDES, FILTER PAPERS, AND FLAVORINGS
We have met the enemy and he is us, the once-famous comic strip possum Pogo declared. Coffee is one of the few widely consumed contemporary foods and beverages that contain absolutely no additives, adulterants, or preservatives. Unfortunately, we have not been able to leave well enough alone. Through our own fussing with coffee we have added a few more health-related issues to the heap.
One is the solvent used in some decaffeination processes, which I discuss earlier in this chapter. Another is the dioxin formerly used in bleaching some paper filters, discussed here. A third consists of health and environmental issues raised by the use of pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers in growing coffee. Finally, some consumers have questioned the healthfulness of the chemical agents used in artificially flavored whole-bean coffees.
All of the various health issues raised in relationship to coffee are summarized in a sort of rogue’s gallery of suspects here. Most of the accusations appear unfounded or overstated, but in a world where newly identified multisyllabic health threats rear their carcinogenic heads from newspaper pages almost daily, concern seems justified. Since I treat the other suspects elsewhere, I am confining my final remarks in this chapter to the agricultural-chemical and coffee-flavoring issues.
Agricultural Chemicals and Organic Coffees
The concerns raised by those apprehensive about the use of agricultural chemicals in coffee growing are twofold. First is the health issue for the consumer: whether harmful chemical residues may reach our systems when we drink coffee. Second are the related environmental and social issues: Whether buying coffees that may be grown with the help of potentially harmful chemicals contributes to the destruction of the environment and threatens the health of the rural poor who raise coffee.
Agricultural Chemicals and Consumer Health. The consumer health issue is simplest to address. Coffee is not eaten raw like lettuce or apples. The bean is the seed of a fruit. The flesh of this fruit is discarded. Along the way the seed is soaked, fermented, and subjected to a thorough drying process. Later it is roasted at temperatures exceeding 400°F and finally broken apart and soaked in near boiling water. This savage history concludes when we consume only the water in which the previously soaked, fermented, dried, roasted, and infused seed was immersed. Given this history of relentless attrition, it hardly seems possible that much if any of the small amounts of pesticide/fungicide residue permitted by law in green coffee ever make it into the cup.
Agricultural Chemicals and the Environment. The environmental and social issues merit more attention. It would seem that only someone exceedingly isolated or stubborn could fail to grasp how dangerous the widespread use of agricultural poisons has become, both to our environment and to the workers who handle these substances. I discuss the environmental and social issues impacting coffee buying in Chapter 6.
Chemical-free Alternatives. In brief, coffee drinkers concerned about the impact of agricultural chemicals on environment and society or those unwilling to accept my reassurances on the consumer health issue have essentially three alternatives:
• Buy a traditional coffee, grown as coffee was grown from its inception, before agricultural chemicals were invented. All Yemen, almost all Ethiopia, and most Sumatra Mandehling coffees are grown in such a state of innocence, and all are among the world’s finest.
• Buy a certified organic coffee, a coffee whose growing conditions and processing have been thoroughly monitored by independent agencies and found to be free of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, chemical fertilizers, and other potentially harmful chemicals. The monitoring agencies visit the farm and verify that no chemicals have been used on the farm for several years and then follow every step of the processing, preparing, transporting, storage, and roasting. Such careful monitoring is of course expensive, which is one reason certified organic coffees cost more than similar uncertified coffees. Many such certified organic coffees are the product of socially and environmentally progressive cooperatives. See here for more on organically grown coffees.
• Buy a coffee labeled “sustainable.” At this writing sustainable is a rather loose term meaning that, in the view of the importer or roaster, designated farmers are doing everything within reason to avoid the use of agricultural chemicals and to pursue enlightened environmental and socially progressive practices in the growing and processing of their coffees. See here for more on sustainable, “Bird-Friendly,” and other recently coined terms for environmentally and socially progressive coffee-growing practices.
Artificial Flavorings and Flavored Coffees
It may seem odd that consumers who choose to buy an obviously artificial product like chocolate mint– or French vanilla–flavored coffee should also want it to be a natural product, but some do. Not only are many of the flavoring components used in flavoring whole-bean coffees artificial by Food and Drug Administration definitions, but the substance that carries the flavorings into the pores of the bean and maintains their integrity throughout the stress of storing, transporting, and brewing is another substance with a spooky multisyllabic name that is technically classified as a solvent. But propylene glycol is a solvent only in the sense that it dissolves flavorings and preserves them. It is not a solvent in the sense that it dissolves stomachs or any other part of the anatomy. Nor is it antifreeze, that is ethylene glycol. Propylene glycol has long been on the Food and Drug Administration’s GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) list, and is used in many other food products.
Flavoring Your Own Coffee. If you do not like consuming flavors that are technically artificial and that use propylene glycol as a medium, yet still enjoy flavored coffees, you probably need to start doing the flavoring yourself. You can add flavors before you grind and brew whole-bean coffee or in the cup after you brew the coffee.
Some flavored coffees are available that use only all-natural ingredients like chunks of vanilla bean or cinnamon, for example, but you will have more variety if you add these kinds of ingredients to whole-bean coffees yourself. I give an assortment of recipes that combine vanilla bean, citrus zest, and various whole spices to whole-bean coffee in my book Home Coffee Roasting: Romance & Revival, also published by St. Martin’s Press.
Another approach is simply to add flavorings to the cup after you brew the coffee. Most good vanilla and almond extracts sold in markets are natural products in an alcohol and glycerin base, and can be added to brewed coffee a few drops at a time. Completely natural flavorings presented without propylene glycol or alcohol are available in some natural food stores. The Frontier brand of natural flavorings is a good one, although only the berry and brandy flavors seem to work well with coffee. Italian-style, flavored syrups of the kind used to flavor espresso-milk drinks will add both flavor and sweetness to regular brewed coffee as well. Of course, you could always try an unflavored coffee with low acid and a distinctive taste—an Ethiopia Yirgacheffe or Yemen, for example.