The Rise of Coffee
americanscientist.orgCoffee (and tea) have some antimicrobial action. They made it safer to drink the water, and did not have the disadvantages of the other alternative, alcoholic drinks.
That’s because you have to boil the water.
Various compounds, including caffeine, that are present in coffee beans have antimicrobial properties. Additional Maillard reaction products that have antimicrobial properties are created by roasting. Coffee is also pretty acidic - IIRC, dorm cafeteria coffee turned chem lab blue litmus paper a pretty red.
They do have some antimicrobial effects, but the "made it safe to drink water because nobody in the world could find clean drinking water until the 19th century" idea is a myth. Mainly people drank different things for different purposes. Water was clarifying, ale, whisky and tea were fortifying (beer was basically a source of calories), wine got you closer to the gods, coffee basically got you high / was an energy drink. Tea was the most popular socially-stimulating drink until coffee supplanted it (and in Muslim nations you couldn't drink alcohol)
Except it's not a myth. For centuries mead, ale or small (low alcohol) beer were the standard drinks throughout the day, occasionally cider from crab and wild apples for the poorest. Wine for those with a little more means. Tea and coffee were for the wealthy until the 19th century, and something to add the drug of choice, sugar, to. Something for the great and the good in the tea rooms and coffee houses of London, until they arrived in huge quantities bringing prices down to commodity level.
Awareness of microbes, boiling for sterility, and water treatment was a long time coming. Water was clean if far enough upstream, or you had a pristine well. In towns and cities, forget it. :)
This appears to be focused on post-15th century America and England; I was talking about world history, where each of these drinks' use predates Western social interpretations. But you're right that economic status often dictated social behavior, and so different things were drank by different social strata, but often because that's just what a person of that social class would do. Tea was originally treated as a very high social strata drink, but by the 18th century nearly all colonial americans were drinking it, up until the revolution supplanted it with alternatives like coffee.
Cities and towns have often historically been located next to rivers not only for transportation, but for agriculture, to remove waste, and for people to drink it. In order to have a "city" you have to solve the transportation of waste, which involves getting in water, and evidence for this goes back well before 3,000BC. The locations for cities were often chosen for good water quality, or avoided due to poor water quality. If water wasn't nearby, they'd pipe it in, and it they couldn't do that, they'd dig wells, often hundreds of em. In Rome, access to water completely transformed the idea of a city and built the biggest one in history up to that point. Cities often had not only public wells, but also fountains specifically for both drinking and hand-washing.
Some famous cities in history had poor access to water, and as they grew they suffered due to a lack of sanitation and clean water. But that has nothing to do with who drank what or for what purpose. All societies have drank different things for different reasons, but almost never due to an inability to get drinking water.
Even today, remote villages that are barely touched by modern man don't boil water or drink alcohol or tea. They just drink straight-up water, and 100,000 years of evolution has proved the idea that we figured out how not to die from it.
Not at all. Where you solve the transportation of waste and getting in water through the river, only the most upstream city was getting potable water, downstream was after washing and waste went in. Wells frequently went down to a polluted or at least unsafe water table. Wells out of the towns and cities were generally safer. Few if any towns were the sole town on a river.
Tea was initially an elite drink in China, the expense in part explaining the rise of the rituals and ceremonies (and lots of equipment) surrounding it. Much the same happened with coffee.
Rome was indeed an exception thanks to their development and aqueducts, but that potable water was coming from well outside the city. In the outlying regions of the empire, without that infrastructure, wine seems to have been the usual, and water for bathing.
Remote enough is akin to upstream enough -- with no shite, washing and other pollutants, getting potable water from a remote spring or well is perfectly feasible.
Article is from 2008
On my desktop, approx. 1/5th of the screen is taken up by a giant top banner for American Scientist, and two paragraphs don't fit on the page. Why do people design websites like this?
Sometimes the designer was paid too much and indulged in make my logo bigger cream.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgcX0y1Nzhs
/s
Looks good to me. https://imgur.com/a/zVSSdMa
I'm so glad I'm not dependent.
It's pretty easy to break through the physiological symptoms of caffeine withdrawal, but more difficult to stick to not drinking it, I find.
I find that the unique taste is what keeps me hooked, and not the caffeine. When Ramadan comes around, it only takes me a few days to get used to not having a morning coffee.
The headaches are pretty bad.
I went from seven cups+ a day to zero caffeine - I was most surprised that I didn't suffer any sort of physical withdrawal - I was anticipating immense suffering.
I used a product called Wean Caffeine to successfully avoid the headaches. It steps you down by 10mg every three days. For anyone wanting to quit, I highly recommend.
It’s a shame they start at 100mg. I think I’d need to start at 200-300mg. I guess I’d have to buy three packs and then use regular caffeine pills to fill in. Gets a little pricey though.
Such an awesome idea though.
Wow I had this exact idea for a product a few months ago. I’m glad someone is already doing it.
Can confirm. Went from drinking 2-3 cups a day to no coffee about a week ago and the headaches were very bad for a solid two days. As in, lay on the bed feeling like an unproductive potato bad.
That was the worst of it though. By day 4 everything felt back to normal. Hoping to keep this up for at least a month or two.
Having been addicted to caffeine and nicotine I found the migranes were equivalent, only with nicotine it would be every 30 minutes after injesting rather than 5 hours.
In both cases they were gone after about a week or two, but I could see how it would be difficult for people who have an easy time smoking (low vs high sin taxes, happen to be at places where you can smoke all the time like your own car and home vs. a restrictive apartment and public transit, whether or not your friends also smoke all the time). My addiction was only for about 2-3 years, too, not half a lifetime like with some people.
God that sounds like hell.
Yeah, I've gone through them. Often times it starts on a Saturday afternoon since I don't drink coffee as frequently on weekends.
There's good parts & bad parts. I can get ornery without it, but I really like having something I look forward to so much.
Having never gotten into the habit, I just don't see the point. I understand that some people feel like they need it to function properly, but isn't that easily solved by getting more sleep?
Instead of staying up late doing things, I just go to bed and do those things in the morning. I find I don't waste as much time and I'm excited to wake up. Rolling out of bed is much easier when video games or a good book is waiting for me. I guess coffee could fill that, but I guess it's not as interesting to me as a hobby.
There is no more point than there is to alcohol, tea, or sweets. It's mostly just for enjoyment- perhaps together with a good book.
Caffeine can also be employed strategically for exceptional circumstances, but that's a less common application.
The next on the list for me is discarding refined sugar products.
The huge variety of unique flavors in coffee from different origins is quite amazing and even now just beginning to be explored. You can now create specific flavors in real time by roasting, grinding and brewing every cup robotically with advanced algorithms at www.sevacoffee.com
That machine is very interesting! If you own one of them, would you mind sharing how roast chamber works? I've thought a bit about how that could be done in a fully-automated fashion, but I'm curious to see what solution they came up with.
Roasting immediately before brewing is not a great idea.
I've been roasting my own beans for 20 years, and one of the first things I learned is that hardly any beans are at their best right after roasting. Freshly roasted is OK, but the beans are outgassing for some time after that. 2-3 days rest after roasting improves the flavor of just about any coffee, especially the fruity dry process Ethiopians I like.
Feel free to email me (address in profile) if you'd like to talk about home roasting - always happy to kick it around with anyone interested.
Also visit https://www.sweetmarias.com/ for lots of information about green coffee and roasting, grinding, and brewing equipment. (I am not affiliated with them at all, just a long time customer.)
Any basic budget advice says to cut starbucks out of your life and make your $5 latte at home, but why stop there?
Caffeine pills work out to $0.05/cup-equivalent, aren't going to make you take bathroom trips, aren't going to give you bad breath, and aren't going to stain your teeth. I usually keep a few in my pocket in case I get randomly drowsy in a meeting or if I'm driving far. I haven't looked back, and I used to pull my own espresso and roast my beans.
> and roast my beans
I'm confused. If you were at a level where you were roasting your own beans, I would think that was because you enjoyed the taste of coffee. You enjoyed it so much that you went out of your way to track down non-roasted beans and roast them yourself. This is not an act of cheapness, this is a labor of love. And you decided, "Nah, I just want caffeine. This bean juice is for suckers"?
As a coffee lover myself, how/why did you make that jump?
Because the side effects I was experiencing made it unpleasant. I would have to use the restroom a half hour, like clockwork, after consumption. My teeth were becoming stained, and they've been repaired in the past and the bonding material no longer matched the actual tooth. I got sick of having coffee breath. My financial side of this addiction was smaller than it would have been at retail, but it was still something and making coffee does take time out of the limited day as well.
I really do like the taste, and I still do get an occasional cup about 1-3 times a month from a cafe, but it wasn't great for my body otherwise. I like the taste of cigars and booze, too, and they have obvious cons that preclude regular consumption. Coffee has cons for me too, even if I enjoyed it, so I just cut out my functional consumption for the sake of being alert and replaced it with a pure source that lacked these side effects.
> As a coffee lover myself, how/why did you make that jump?
My reasons are right there in the original post: "bathroom trips... bad breath... stain your teeth". Those things become more obnoxious as I aged.
Throw away java ;-)
> Any basic budget advice says to cut starbucks out of your life and make your $5 latte at home
Unless you go to <insert-coffee-shop> not only for the coffee (social/working space/etc.).
> Caffeine pills work out to $0.05/cup-equivalent
Doesn't replicate the taste or all of the potential health benefits of coffee[0]
[0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/what-is-it-ab...
Edit: For purely budget reasons, the parent comment's points are valid.
Caffeine pills were the drug of choice when I did kickboxing competition. They make you really alert and focused. I always thought them to be smoother than coffee. I don’t like talking any pills so I used them only when at the morning of a fight.
I drink coffee for the taste, not the buzz!
So decaf then?
Absolutely! But it's not easy to find good whole bean decaf coffee.
How do they not make you take bathroom trips? Caffeine is a diuretic.
This probably affects people differently.
I know people who can have coffee and fall asleep immediately afterwards, and have little to none urinary symptoms at all; and other people who’ll not sleep and / or need to pee frequently.
Personally, I find tea to be a much stronger diuretic. Even herbal tea (zero caffeine). Coffee used to cause diuretic symptoms, until I reached the point where I drank it every day. I drink tea most days now, but the diuretic effects never subsided.
/rant. Bodies are weird.
Note that herbal tea also has zero tea in it usually and so shouldn't be lumped in with tea either.
Perhaps your symptoms are psychosomatic?
It wasn't the urination for coffee that I'm referring to with these bathroom trips, I'm talking about number 2. Maybe I pee about the same, but I'm no longer cramping up and speed walking to the nearest stall.
Only if you arent adapted to it and you are given lots.
Caffeine pills also release the caffeine in a different way.
I too was a student and I too tried to min/max. I found that caffeine via coffee hit me harder and wore off quicker. A pill was this slow drip effect that left me absolutely screwed for bedtime if I had it any time past 1pm.
Anecdotal but my conclusion is: they're not the same.
I find I can still sleep alright 4 hours after taking a pill, like I would with a cup of coffee. I keep to that schedule of every 4-5 hours over the course of the day.
Maybe the coatings in your particular pill were different. I found gelatin capsules kicked in slower than pressed tablets that began to dissolve when they hit my saliva, but still lasted about the same. My tolerance to caffeine has always been high, though.
Why rely on caffeine instead of just getting more sleep? Go to bed earlier and do your nighttime hobbies or whatever in the morning. It saves money and time since I'm actually excited to get out of bed in the morning.
I think I'd rather just keep drinking coffee.
And you can wash it down with an energy drink!