What Is Wrong With Putting Cream And Sugar In Your Coffee?
Coffee with sugar in the morning is more effective than coffee alone in improving brain performance according to a study from the University of Barcelona in Spain.
The Daily Mail reports that coffee with sugar boosts memory and attention span. But we already knew that. That’s why we drink coffee and often why we add sugar. And then there are those who argue that sugar has no nutritional value except energy and cream, milk and other coffee additives are bad for you. So, they say you should just drink your coffee black. An article in Public Health details the amounts of sugar and fats ingested with coffee by U.S. adults. The study is very detailed and they comment that ingestion of sugar and creamers should be considered part of the diet to the extent that they are ingested in excess. So what is wrong with putting cream and sugar in your coffee? It would appear that in moderation there is no problem. Obviously the devil is in the details.
Coffee and Diabetes
Years ago we wrote that more organic coffee can lead to less diabetes.
Drinking organic coffee reduces the incidence of Type II diabetes, the type that affects 95% of people with the disease. This has been known for some years but until recently no one really knew why. Now researchers at UCLA have found what may be the reason. It turns out that there is a protein called sex hormone-binding globulin. Its normal job is to regulate sex hormone activity in the human body. Researchers have long suspected that the same hormone has an effect on the development of Type II diabetes. How does organic coffee come into the picture? Drinking coffee increases the body’s levels of sex hormone-binding globulin. The bottom line of the UCLA study was that drinking 4 or more cups of coffee a day, with caffeine, reduces Type II diabetes incidence by 56%, more than half.
It appears that this benefit of drinking coffee comes from the antioxidants in java. What do daily products do to antioxidants? An article in naturalsociety.com says that antioxidants lose their power when eaten with milk protein. They quote a study of blueberries in yogurt. Thus, it would appear that if you put a little bit of coffee in a lot of yogurt, cream, milk or other milk protein compound you may reduce the effect of the antioxidants and thus reduce the effect of reducing diabetes incidence. We think, however, this does not really apply to a small amount of cream in a cup of coffee.
Too much sugar worsens diabetes in diabetics. However, sugar is not the cause of the disease. The antioxidants in coffee have been shown to have a beneficial effect in reducing the incidence of Type II diabetes. If you are a coffee drinker and have diabetes it is probably wise to cut out the sugar in your coffee but there is no evidence that I see that sugar, or cream in your coffee causes diabetes.
The same argument can be made for fats in daily products or non-dairy creamers in regard to heart disease. Adding these to your coffee in moderation is unlikely to be a problem for the majority of people and if you have known heart disease or cholesterol problems drink your coffee black until your doctor says otherwise.
Is Organic Coffee Worth It?
High quality organic coffee has great taste and aroma. It is free of more than a hundred impurities that can be found in regular coffee. And organic coffee is more expensive than regular coffee. Is organic coffee worth it? What qualities distinguish organic coffee from regular coffee and what are those qualities worth to you?
High Quality Arabica Coffee
On Amazon you can find a 14 ounce bag of medium roast Kona coffee for $31.34 if you buy several bags. And you can get a one pound (16 ounce) bag of organic coffee from café solar for $14.50. It would appear that organic coffee is worth it when you can get a high quality organic coffee for less than a well-known regular coffee brand.
What Is Your Health Worth?
If you want to do a health benefit-related cost benefit analysis of coffee you will find that healthy organic coffee and regular coffee both have substantial health benefits. That is providing that both coffees are fresh. Most of the health benefit aspects of coffee come from the antioxidants. Unfortunately antioxidants don’t last forever; in fact they oxidize when exposed to the air. Green coffee beans when properly stored are good for two years and roasted coffee beans when properly stored are good for 6 months. Ground coffee is good for as long as it lasts which is a short time. If avoiding diabetes, various forms of cancer and more are worth it to you buy fresh organic or regular coffee.
How about Those Impurities?
“produced by farmers who emphasize the use of renewable resources and the conservation of soil and water to enhance environmental quality for future generations. Organic meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products come from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones. Organic food is produced without using most conventional pesticides; fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge; bioengineering; or ionizing radiation. Before a product can be labeled ‘organic,’ a Government-approved certifier inspects the farm where the food is grown to make sure the farmer is following all the rules necessary to meet USDA organic standards. Companies that handle or process organic food before it gets to your local supermarket or restaurant must be certified, too.”
If it is worth it to you to avoid drinking pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and synthetic fertilizer residue perhaps you would like to drink organic coffee.
What Is a Healthy World Worth?
Sustainable coffee production is the basis of organic coffee.
Does sustainable coffee production mean that the coffee produced is healthy organic coffee? Organic coffee certification tells the consumer that their coffee was grown, harvested, processed, stored, and roasted in accordance with rules of the United States Department of Agriculture. But, does coffee need USDA certification to be organic coffee? The answer is obviously no. Many growers find the yearly $500 needed for USDA certification to be too expensive and many find that being certified does not bring them any more customers or customers who pay any better. Although organic coffee grown and certified by the USDA is the result of sustainable coffee production so is coffee that is UTZ certified or Rainforest Alliance certified.
Sustainable agriculture builds up nutrients in the soil and protects the water table from contamination. Sustainable agriculture means that farmers can produce crops on the same soil generation after generation. If this is worth something to you buy organic coffee!
Single Serve Coffee and Now Alcohol
Will wonders never cease? Keurig, the folks who invented the k cup for single serve coffee, are now working on a single serve machine for beer and liquor. CBC News writes about the Keurig single-serve alcohol machine.
Imagine popping a single-serve pod into your Keurig machine and – ta-dah! – out pours a martini.
The idea is not far-fetched. Keurig Green Mountain – the manufacturer of the popular single-cup coffee maker – is now working on an at-home booze machine.
If all goes according to plan, it would be like having a personal bartender in your home, offering everything from single servings of beer and spirits to cocktails and mixers.
For the project, U.S.-based Keurig has teamed up with Anheuser-Busch InBev, a multinational beverage and brewing company.
Critics are quick to mention that there are already quick and convenient ways to consume alcohol like cans of beer, single serve bottles of wine or pre mixed cocktails from your frig. What critics have not mentioned are the drawbacks that are already an issue with k-cups. We wrote about the death of the k cup.
Are we going to see the death of the k cup? Keurig, the maker of single serve coffee saw its stock drop 30% after reporting diminishing sales. Fortune reports as Keurig sales plunge. We wrote recently about k cups in our article, Does Organic Coffee in a K Cup Make Sense? There is a basic contradiction in the equation of selling organic coffee in plastic containers that will fill up landfills and not decompose for thousands of years! However, the more likely case is that single serving coffee is a fad and fads run their course. So, is this the death of the k cup or simply a retrenchment into a smaller market?
K cups make sense when you are traveling and need a cup of coffee in your hotel room. And k cups make sense if you really need to reduce your coffee intake or don’t want to keep throwing out all of that unused coffee. But, these arguments do not apply to alcoholic drinks which are typically available in cans and bottles and don’t require a machine for their use. Will single serve alcohol bloom into a fad like single serve coffee and if so will it go bust?
CNN Money addresses the k cup coffee fad.
It seems that Keurig alienated its core customers with its newest machine, the Keurig 2.0. Some consumers balked at the $199.99 price tag. But what really irked caffeine addicts was the fact that the new Keurig could only make coffee with officially licensed K-Cups.
But there is a big cottage industry of cheaper, private label coffee pods that were compatible with older Keurig machines.
Two makers of those cups, TreeHouse Foods and Rogers Family Co., have both sued Keurig Green Mountain and accused the company of anti-competitive practices.
Rogers went as far as creating a “Freedom Clip” that lets Keurig 2.0 customers brew non-licensed pods.
It would seem that the k cup fad is wearing thin and Keurig has hurt itself by trying to corner the market with a machine upgrade that excludes other brands. That, in the end, is probably the reason for the death of the k cup.
In light of this one can see the single serve alcohol machine as a last gasp effort by Keurig to stay solvent.
Organic Coffee T-Discs
The world has fallen in love with single serve coffee. Make a single cup of coffee when you want it and stop pouring all of those coffee grounds down the drain or into the garbage. Keurig started the single serve craze with its k-cups.
Keurig is an American manufacturer of coffee brewers and producers of K-cups.
Each K-Cup is a plastic container with a coffee filter inside. Ground coffee beans are packed in the K-Cup and sealed air-tight with a combination plastic and foil lid. When the K-Cup is placed in a Keurig brewer, the brewer punctures both the foil lid and the bottom of the K-Cup and forces hot water under pressure through the K-Cup and into a mug or cup.
From small beginnings this single serve revolution has moved into one in four US homes as well as offices and hotel rooms.
And when there is a success product there are imitators. In fact there are biodegradable k-cups which answer the issue of whether organic coffee in a k-cup makes sense. After all why go organic with coffee and then fill the world with plastic cups that last forever in the land fill?
Waste 360 reports that it is possible to recycle K cups into cement.
A B.C. program that recycles Keurig coffee K-Cups into cement has been so successful that it may expand into Alberta.
The Lafarge cement plant in Kamloops, B.C. turned about 1.4 million K-Cups into cement last year, after teaming up with Van Houtte Coffee Services, which collects the used pods for recycling.
Now Keurig just needs to give every customer a pre-paid envelope with each set of cups so that customers can mail their used K Cups to Alberta!
A new system does not use cups but rather a disc. These organic coffee t-discs come from Tassimo. A promotional article in Organic Sunshine describes the Tassimo coffee maker.
All you do is take a little disc (T-disc with barcode), put it in the machine, close the lid and push the go button and voila you get your favorite drink. Another cool thing about the Tassimo is that you can adjust the strength of your coffee. It’s totally customizable. You can make a strong, small cup of coffee or a large, weak cup of coffee. Pick your poison, as the old saying goes. It’s that simple.
The T-disc options include coffee, espresso, tea, milk (for lattes and cappuccinos) and hot chocolate.
A drawback to Tassimo organic coffee t-discs is that their coffee maker does not allow you to use any other product including any of the Colombian organic coffee brands shipped directly to you from Colombia.
The positive part of organic coffee-discs is their programmability and the fact that they are a single serve choice. If you do not make coffee or a group of people every day and if you want to limit your coffee intake to just a cup every so often single serve in the form of organic coffee t-discs could be the right choice.
What Is Coffee Aroma?
Wake up and smell the coffee, the saying goes. The aroma of coffee entices us to drink our java but just what is coffee aroma? The tongue tastes sweet, bitter, salty and sour. The rest of what we call taste comes from aroma and coffee has lots of it. Coffeeresearch.org tells us all about coffee chemistry and coffee aroma.
Coffee aroma is responsible for all coffee flavor attributes other than the mouthfeel and sweet, salt, bitter, and sour taste attributes that are perceived by the tongue. Therefore, it might be said that coffee aroma is the most important attribute to specialty coffee. Even instant coffee has the components responsible for stimulation of our taste buds. The difference, however, is that instant coffee lacks most of the aromatic volatile compounds causing a dramatic decrease in the overall coffee flavor.
It seems like every year more and more aromatic chemical compounds are discovered in coffee. The count today is more than 800 of these. However we don’t experience most of these. The coffee aroma we experience is based on the following:
How strong is the aroma of the compound?
How much of the compound is in your coffee?
How receptive are you to that particular aroma? This is known as the odor threshold.
What compounds provide the most aromas and what aroma do we experience from them? These are the big four in descending order.
Furans: These compounds come from the breakdown of sugars in the coffee bean during roasting and result in a caramel-like aroma.
Pyrazines: These compounds are responsible for cereal, roasted, cracker, toast-like walnut aromas in coffee.
Pyrroles: The sweet, caramel-like and mushroom-like aromas in coffee can come from these compounds.
Thiophens: If your coffee has a meaty aroma it probably comes from the breakdown of amino acids and sulfur in these compounds.
These are complex chemical compounds. For example, guaiacol which gives coffee a phenolic and spicy aroma has this chemical structure and chemical names.
C7H8O2, 2-Methoxyphenol
Synonyms: o-Hydroxyanisole; Guaiacol; guaicol; o-methylcatechol; pyroguaiac acid; pyrocatechol monomethyl ether; Catechol monomethyl ether; Hydroxy-2-methoxybenzene; 1-hydroxy-2-methoxybenzene; Methyl catechol
Aroma and Much More
The aromatic compounds in coffee provide the smell of the coffee and the taste but many of these compounds are also the antioxidants that make coffee so healthy.
Recent research shows that organic coffee antioxidants include chlorogenic acid lactones and lipophilic antioxidants. Chlorogenic acid lactones and lipophilic antioxidants are capable of protecting nerve cells when challenged with hydrogen peroxide.
Scientific American has a cute video entitled The Universe in a Cup of Coffee in which it mentions several compounds that provide the aroma in coffee.
That rich coffee aroma rises from the steam because roasting coffee beans converts bitter chlorogenic acid into a diverse set of compounds. Some smells you’d expect-fruity, spicy, earthy, vanilla-but there are a few surprises (cabbage??). And adding a splash of milk or sprinkle of sugar sets off a chain of physical reactions. Convection makes the cold milk sink while the interactions between milk and coffee molecules create the milky swirls. Brownian motion also will spontaneously mix the coffee over time, no need for a stirrer.
Pyrazine gives coffee an earthy smell. Methylpropanol is responsible for fruity and spicy aromas. Vanillin gives us the vanilla aroma in coffee. Methional is responsible for any baked potato aroma in your coffee. If your coffee has a bit of a cabbage odor you can blame methanethiol. It is in the roasting that most of these compounds are created
Is Organic Coffee Gluten Free?
One of our readers asked recently about if she can safely drink organic coffee when she cannot eat foods that contain gluten. The quick answer is that healthy organic coffee is gluten free. This might not be the case with all coffees however. Organic coffee certification assures you that there is nothing in your coffee but toxin free, contaminant free high quality coffee.
Organic coffee differs from regular coffee in several aspects. The soil in which organic coffee is grown must have been verified as free from prohibited substances for at least three years. In addition there must be distinct boundaries between land on which organic coffee is grown and land where pesticides, herbicides, and prohibited chemical fertilizers are used. This guarantees that drift of substances sprayed or otherwise applied on adjacent land will not contaminate the organic plot of land. Organic coffee certification includes the adherence to a specific and verifiable plan for all practices and procedures from planting to crop maintenance, to harvest, de-husking, bagging, transport, roasting, packaging, and final transport. Along the way procedures must be in place at every step to insure that there is no contamination of the healthy organic coffee produced in pristine soil with regular coffee produced on soil exposed to herbicides, pesticides, and organic fertilizers.
This also insures that coffee is not transported in or stored in containers that previously included other foodstuffs including those containing gluten.
Gluten
If you cannot digest it properly gluten can cause gas, bloating, diarrhea or even constipation. It can cause a rash on your arms and make you feel tired after eating. The primary offender is wheat in bread, crackers, bran and wheat in all its forms. In addition barley and rye contain gluten as well and although oats are gluten free they may have been stored or processed where gluten containing grains are stored and thus are contaminated.
Gluten sensitive people learn what foods to avoid which foods to eat. A problem is that gluten also shows up in salad dressings, veggie burgers, soy sauce and even packaged seasonings and spice mixes. The issue of gluten hiding in with other foods is where coffee can bother gluten sensitive people.
What’s in Your Coffee?
A couple of years ago we wrote an article entitled Coffee Please, No Dirt.
We have found yet another reason to only buy whole bean healthy organic coffee from reputable suppliers. A recent article in the Washington Post noted that as coffee supplies diminish and prices go up some suppliers of ground coffee are adding things to their coffee. The title of the article is Dirt, corn twigs, soybeans and other fillers are appearing in coffee.
Cream and sugar may not be the only additives in your morning cup of coffee. Tough growing conditions and rising demand are leading some coffee producers to mix in wheat, soybean, brown sugar, rye, barley, acai seeds, corn, twigs and even dirt.
As we noted in our recent article Brazil Drought Drives Arabica Prices Higher there is a historic drought in Brazil, the country that produces more coffee than anyone else. The ten million or so bag deficit in production this year will amount to about a forty billion cup of coffee deficit! Looks like some folks are looking to make up for ten million missing bags of coffee by adding corn, soybeans, etc. and grinding it all up to sell. This is actually an age old trick to reduce the cost of doing business while not reducing what they sell the coffee for.
The point of all this is to drink only certified organic coffee if you are a gluten sufferer because healthy organic coffee is gluten free.
Is Organic Coffee Toxin Free?
We live in a world where they keep adding more and more things to our food and drink. Are things like high fructose corn syrup or monosodium glutamate good for you? How about the residues of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, or antibiotics? What toxins are the lurking about that you don’t know about? How do you avoid eating and drinking things that are not especially good for you? Is organic coffee toxin free? That brings us to healthy organic coffee.
Start the day with a hot cup of healthy organic coffee and you can receive a number of health benefits. Healthy organic coffee contains calcium. It contains antioxidants such as polyphenols which are also called condensed tannins and help prevent tooth decay in addition to their antioxidant activity. The antioxidant properties of a healthy cup of organic coffee include the ability to lessen age associated cellular damage, prevent new blood vessel formation in cancerous tissue, and inhibit the long term inflammation seen in atherosclerosis. Ongoing research points to uses of polyphenols as treatments for specific age related conditions. And all of this from a cup of healthy organic coffee!
And you get all of this in a cup of organic coffee without the toxins and other contaminants too often found in our food and even in regular coffee.
A study by the Australian Food Standards Authority revealed that as many as 133 contaminants may be in a cup of commercially available coffee. These contaminants include metals such as aluminum and zinc, pesticide residues, ochratoxin A, acrylamide, furan, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Some polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are found to cause cancer. Furans have been associated with skin disorders, liver problems, certain kinds of cancers, impairment to the reproductive, endocrine, and immune system, as well as effects on embryonic development.
How do we know that a cup organic coffee is toxin and contaminate free?
Organic Coffee Certification
Since you probably don’t live in a place like the Colombian Eje Cafetero where coffee grows in everywhere including back yards you can’t know personally if you coffee is toxin free. But you can rely on organic coffee certification.
Organic coffee differs from regular coffee in several aspects. The soil in which organic coffee is grown must have been verified as free from prohibited substances for at least three years. In addition there must be distinct boundaries between land on which organic coffee is grown and land where pesticides, herbicides, and prohibited chemical fertilizers are used. This guarantees that drift of substances sprayed or otherwise applied on adjacent land will not contaminate the organic plot of land. Organic coffee certification includes the adherence to a specific and verifiable plan for all practices and procedures from planting to crop maintenance, to harvest, de-husking, bagging, transport, roasting, packaging, and final transport. Along the way procedures must be in place at every step to insure that there is no contamination of the healthy organic coffee produced in pristine soil with regular coffee produced on soil exposed to herbicides, pesticides, and organic fertilizers.
The gold standard for certification in North America is the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture). The USDA directly certifies coffee grown on US soil, namely in Hawaii. In Central and South America the USDA uses the services of agencies such as Bio Latina to walk the mountains from Mexico to Peru and Colombia to Brazil testing soil, coffee and farming practices to guarantee that your certified organic coffee is toxin and contaminant free. Besides USDA certification, look for UTZ and Rainforest Alliance.
How Did Coffee Evolve?
Humans started drinking coffee in the Middle East, India, Persia, Turkey and Northern Africa by the 16th century. However it was probably discovered and first prepared in the 10th century, with its use centered in monasteries in countries like Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula. As the consumption of coffee spread so did its cultivation. A plant that grew wild in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula is now grown worldwide. But how did coffee evolve to contain caffeine and those antioxidants that are so important to health?
The Coffee Genome
Scientists have analyzed the DNA of coffee. It turns out that the caffeine in coffee evolved separately from the caffeine in tea or chocolate. But once the plant contained caffeine pests quit bothering it but pollinators like beans came back again and again. The University of Buffalo studied the coffee genome.
The newly sequenced genome of the coffee plant reveals secrets about the evolution of man’s best chemical friend: caffeine.
The scientists who completed the project say the sequences and positions of genes in the coffee plant show that they evolved independently from genes with similar functions in tea and chocolate, which also make caffeine.
In other words, coffee did not inherit caffeine-linked genes from a common ancestor, but instead developed the genes on its own.
Once the plant started making caffeine natural selection took over because when pests are turned away by the caffeine more of the plants survive and reproduce. When pollinators like the plant they help with reproduction. The variety of coffee studied was robusta or Coffea Canephora.
Compared to several other plant species, including the grape and tomato, coffee harbors larger families of genes that relate to the production of alkaloid and flavonoid compounds, which contribute to qualities such as coffee aroma and the bitterness of beans.
Coffee also has an expanded collection of N-methyltransferases, enzymes that are involved in making caffeine.
Why caffeine is so important in nature is another question. Scientists theorize that the chemical may help plants repel insects or stunt competitors’ growth. One recent paper showed that pollinators – like humans – may develop caffeine habits. Insects that visited caffeine-producing plants often returned to get another taste.
New genes arrive by chance pairings or replication mistakes. The failures lead to plant death or at least a less competitive plant in its environment. In the case of coffee the antioxidants and caffeine that make coffee pleasurable and healthy for humans also help protect the plant and help it replicate. The scientists note that coffee did not diversify as much as one might see in other species. This is probably because it was so well adapted to its environment and so successful that the basic species always out-competed any diverging rivals. In this case we can think of alligators, crocodiles or even cockroaches which have survived as the same model for millions of years. The all-time winner is probably the horseshoe crab which has used the same shape and form for 445 million years. We can only hope that humans and coffee enjoy the same longevity!
Organic Hazelnut Coffee K Cups
Coffee is good for you and organic coffee is better. Organic coffee from Colombia has specific flavors depending on what part of the Eje Cafetero it comes from. But, what if you like other unique flavors? And what if you like the efficiency of single serve coffee? Can you get the right combination such as organic hazelnut coffee K cups?
The Internet Comes to the Rescue
If your local grocery store does not have the combination you like, such as organic hazelnut coffee K cups, search on the internet. Here is what we found.
Our search resulted in two ads from Amazon for EKOCUPS artisan organic hazelnut flavored coffee, followed by White coffee organic single serve coffee, hazelnut. Then there are Dean’s Beans organic coffee, Island hazelnut organic Kona blend coffee pods hazelnut flavor, Organic Coffee Company, Organic, flavored, decaf coffees from Green Mountain and Green Mountain coffee hazelnut light roast K-Cups coffee. And that is just the first page of a Google search. Each entry has various coffees, including organic hazelnut coffee K cups.
Hazelnuts
People have been growing hazelnuts for food for about 9,000 starting in Stone Age Scotland. In those days nuts were a replacement when meat was scarce. Today hazelnuts are grown all over the world. You can buy hazelnut syrup to put in your coffee or you can buy unsalted and shelled hazelnuts. If you want to do it right you can add two parts coffee beans and one part shelled hazelnuts to your coffee grinder and create ground hazelnut coffee. The best route next is to use a French press.
Aside from the flavor are hazelnuts good for you? Hazelnuts contain manganese, copper, magnesium, phosphorus, iron, potassium, zinc, folate, thiamin, niacin, calcium and vitamins C, E, B-6 and K. They are rich in protein and monounsaturated fatty acids. The ingredients in Hazelnuts help your heart, your blood pressure and are useful in preventing diabetes. Like coffee, hazelnuts contain antioxidants. The antioxidants in hazelnuts, like in coffee, help prevent cancer.
K Cups
As single serve coffee becomes more popular there are more and more variations on the theme. Recently we have written about the following:
Folks love K cups but remember that if you are drinking organic coffee you don’t want to negate that good act by adding plastic to the world’s landfills. Does organic coffee in a k cup make sense?
Waste 360 reports that it is possible to recycle K cups into cement.
A B.C. program that recycles Keurig coffee K-Cups into cement has been so successful that it may expand into Alberta.
The Lafarge cement plant in Kamloops, B.C. turned about 1.4 million K-Cups into cement last year, after teaming up with Van Houtte Coffee Services, which collects the used pods for recycling.
Now Keurig just needs to give every customer a pre-paid envelope with each set of cups so that customers can mail their used K Cups to Alberta!
Good luck in finding organic hazelnut coffee k cups and good luck finding biodegradable k cups!