Organic Coffee Shop
Where is the easiest place to buy healthy organic coffee? Is there such a thing as an organic coffee shop? Your local coffee roaster or corner coffee shop may well be an ideal organic coffee shop. However, because of the popularity of coffee in general it is unlikely that you will find a bricks and mortar organic coffee shop solely devoted to organic coffee. If you choose a coffee roaster as your organic coffee shop you will have access to organic whole bean coffee, roasted to your specifications and in the quantities you request. On the other hand if your corner coffee shop is your organic coffee shop, you can drop in any time during business hours and get a freshly roasted cup of organic coffee and leave the purchasing, storing, roasting, and brewing to them.
Certified Organic
When you get your coffee from an organic coffee shop you will typically get USDA organic coffee. This is coffee
”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.”
Look for organic coffee certification at your organic coffee shop and drink coffee that you can trust to be pure and grown under sustainable conditions.
Convenient and Good For You Too
When you find an organic coffee shop you can get your sustainably grown and processed coffee without fuss or bother. Organic coffee is free of the hundred or more impurities that researchers have found in regular coffee. And organic coffee antioxidants are just as good and just the same as antioxidants in regular coffee, giving protection against a wide range of disease including type II diabetes, colon cancer, prostate cancer, and endometrial cancer. Although there are foods with higher concentrations of antioxidants than coffee, the amount of coffee that people regularly drink makes coffee the greatest source of these protective chemicals in our lives. Think in terms of a fifty percent reduction in the risk of getting the most common type of diabetes. Think in terms of the caffeine and antioxidants from your organic coffee shop reducing the chances of several dreaded diseases. And think in terms of some of the best coffee in the world, readily available on a daily basis. For more information about healthy organic coffee, organic coffee certification, coffee house coffee, and wholesale green or roasted coffee beans contact us at Buy Organic Coffee.
Organic Food vs. Childhood Obesity
Eating organic is such a simple concept that it is deceiving. The idea is to eat fruits and vegetables that have been produced without the use of chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides, meat that is from animals that have not been given antibiotics and growth hormones, and food that does not contain chemical flavor enhancers or preservatives. It sounds simple enough, and it is simple – it just isn’t easy to accomplish.
We have an epidemic of childhood obesity in this country. The causes for this epidemic are many, but there are two main causes – lack of exercise, and eating the wrong food.
Food preferences are acquired. Little babies aren’t born into this world loving chocolate and hating broccoli. They don’t have an opinion, but they form opinions based upon their early experiences with food. If they are given chocolate, they will like chocolate. If they are given apples, they will like apples. So the first thing that we can do to stop this epidemic of childhood obesity is to help kids develop food preferences that are healthy and less fattening.
The second thing that we can do is to systematically begin eliminating the additives and preservatives in food that contribute to childhood obesity — and adult obesity as well. Flavor enhancers like MSG actually excite brain cells to the point that they self-destruct. The additive also increases the tendency for obesity. There’s no doubt about it.
There are other food additives that are just as bad. The best policy is to eliminate all prepackaged foods from a child’s diet. The weight loss will begin almost immediately when organic apples are substituted for potato chips.
The toxins that are in food that is produced by conventional means are also contributing to childhood obesity. Organic food can help to cure the childhood obesity epidemic!
Improve Coffee Taste
Tired of the same dull taste of the coffee that you usually buy? How can you improve coffee taste? There are a number of ways to improve coffee taste and gain other benefits of healthy organic coffee as well. Buying organic coffee is a good first step to improve coffee taste. Regular coffee can have as many as 133 unwanted impurities according to published research. Coffee grown under sustainable agricultural practices comes out better. It is free of the many insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, synthetic fertilizers, and other unwanted impurities found on regular coffee plantations. Want to improve coffee taste? Start with certified organic coffee.
Green Coffee Beans Last Longer
A major factor in the taste of coffee is freshness. The organic coffee antioxidants that lend special flavor to organic coffee deteriorate with time. Green coffee beans, after picking and drying and before roasting, are good in the bag for a couple of years. If you have a large supply of coffee you probably want to buy green coffee beans and only roast what you will be drinking in the coming weeks. Roasted coffee beans retain their freshness for up to six months but when you grind roasted coffee beans the clock starts to tick and flavor goes away by the day if not the hour. Improve coffee taste by storing green coffee beans for up to two years and roasted coffee beans for up to months. Avoid buying large amounts of ground coffee.
Which Roast Is Right for You?
Coffee is roasted at temperatures from 240 to 275 degree Celsius (464 to 527 degrees Fahrenheit). The process lasts from three to thirty minutes depending on how caramelized the roaster wants his final product to be. Although coffee beans contain antioxidants before roasting the roasting process produces more antioxidants.
Types of Coffee Roast by Temperature
Cinnamon Roast 195 °C (383 °F)
New England Roast 205 °C (401 °F)
American Roast 210 °C (410 °F)
City Roast 220 °C (428 °F)
Full City Roast 225 °C (437 °F)
Vienna Roast 230 °C (446 °F)
French Roast 240 °C (464 °F)
Italian Roast 245 °C (473 °F)
Spanish Roast 250 °C (482 °F)
Many seek to improve coffee taste with roasting. At lower temperatures the original flavor predominates and with higher temperatures and roasting times the roasting process produces a burnt taste that predominates.
What Do You Put in Your Coffee?
In an old John Travolta movie the actor is explaining life to a baby. He feels that it is important to note that when a New Yorker asks for coffee, regular, he wants regular strength coffee with both cream and sugar. Depending on where you are in the world the amount and types of additives and strength of coffee will vary. Espresso originated in Europe. After the Second World War European coffee houses learned to dilute express with an equal amount of water to make “Americano” to suit the tastes of American GI’s. When a Colombian in Manizales, in the heart of the Cafetero, asks for milk with his coffee he wants latte, equal parts hot milk and coffee with whichever is his favorite of the Colombian coffee organic brands. However, you choose to improve coffee taste we suggest that you start with the organic kind.
Organic Food Stores
All stores that sell organic food and organically produced products are not created equal. There are a couple of things that you need to know before your first shopping trip to a store that advertised organic food and other “green” products.
First, the term “organic” does not mean exactly what you would think that it means. A product that is labeled “organic” may not mean that it is totally organic. Learn to recognize these terms:
- “Certified Organic”: The “certified organic” label means that the product has been produced adhering to the organic standards mandated by the government of the United States.
- “Organic”: The label “organic” means that the product contains at least 95% organic materials. Foods that are imported from abroad, for example, may be labeled “organic” if they meet the organic standards of their country of origin. But that doesn’t mean that those standards are as stringent as the standards of the United States. There is a big variation between organic standards from country to country.
- “100% Organic”: This is a label that is sometimes put on single-ingredient products like apples or oranges. It simply means that the fruit or vegetable was grown without the use of chemicals.
- “Made with organic ingredients”: This term means that 70% of the ingredients are organic. The claim can appear on the front of package but must name the specific ingredients.
- “Contains organic ingredients”: This term means that the product contains less than 70% organic ingredients.
Labels can be deceiving. You have to understand the language and the labeling so that you know exactly what you are buying. There are fines and penalties for mislabeling products as organic when they are in fact not organic.
Find Organic Coffee
For the best tasting coffee with fewer impurities and a lighter environmental footprint many drink healthy organic coffee. If you are not familiar with coffee grown using sustainable agricultural practices where do you find organic coffee? What are the best tasting, least expensive, certified organic coffee brands? To find organic coffee look for it at your grocery store or supermarket for starters. Some stores stock organic coffee next to the regular stuff. You will want to make sure there is proof of organic coffee certification on the bag, however. Organic coffee is different from regular coffee in several ways. The soil in which organic coffee is grown must have been free from prohibited substances for at least three years verified as being so. And there must be clear boundaries between land where organic coffee is grown and land on which pesticides, herbicides, and prohibited chemical fertilizers are used. This is required to guarantee that sprayed substances don’t drift and contaminate organically maintained soil. Organic coffee requires a specific and verifiable plan for all procedures and practices from planting to harvest through final transport. When you find organic coffee you find a product that tastes great, is free from the many impurities that can be found in a cup of regular coffee and is good for the environment.
Find Organic Coffee Online
When you look to find organic coffee online you will see promotional material from coffee roasters, coffee farmers selling wholesale coffee as green coffee beans, and marketers seeking to profit from providing an easy way for you to find organic coffee brands not readily available in your community. As examples, Panama Mountain Grown Organic Coffee is commonly not available at your local market. However, you can obtain coffee from the Isthmus of Panama through this web site. Likewise, Colombian Organic Coffee Brands can be hard to find. It is impossible to mail retail bags of coffee out of Colombia and when you fly out of Colombia they will pin prick your coffee bags so that the really big German Sheppard in the Bogotá airport and the mechanical drug sniffer can check it. Look online to find organic coffee and bypass the hassle to dealing in a foreign language, unless you were born to a Spanish speaking family, and the need to travel to Latin America simply for the coffee.
Find Organic Coffee at Your Favorite Roaster
If you cannot find organic coffee at your coffee roaster ask them to obtain a bag to or two to keep in stock. Green coffee beans, as your roaster knows, last for a couple of years on the shelf so even if you are the only customer they will eventually sell out their supply. More commonly, when they choose to advertise the fact that they carry organic brands of coffee they will probably need to order more before you come back for a refill. The greatest advantage of buying your organic coffee from a local roaster is that you obtain your coffee at the peak of its roasted freshness, after the roasting process has created new organic coffee antioxidants, created the final flavor, and created the antioxidants to beneficial to your health.
Organic Food Online
In many parts of the country, finding organic food is a difficult task. Unfortunately, organic food is not readily available everywhere…yet. In most parts of the country, you can find organically produced foods locally. Farmer’s markets are a good place to start. You can find food that has been grown without the use of chemical fertilizers or toxic pesticides. You should expect to pay a little more for organic food than nonorganic food, but the small added cost is worth it in health benefits to you and your family as well as to Planet Earth.
If you are having difficulty finding organic food locally, go online and look for it. You will be surprised at the options that are available. You can even sign up to receive a basket of organic food on a regular basis at many online sites.
The organic food market is booming. It’s exploding! More and more people are demanding organically grown food, and when demand increases, you can bet that supply will increase as well. It isn’t hard to see why the organic food market is growing at warp speed. All you have to do is pick up today’s newspaper and you are likely to see yet another article about tainted food that has caused sickness or death somewhere in the country.
Here in America, we have always had great confidence that our food supply was safe, but with the huge number of imports now and the great number of problems with those imports, the public’s confidence in the safety of the food supply is weakening. That’s why more and more people are turning to organically produced food.
Food producers are filing the demand for organic food, and these producers are as close as your computer keyboard. You can have safe food shipped directly to your home.
Organic Food Myths
There are always at least two different opinions, no matter what the subject is. Organic food isn’t an exception. I always wonder where and how these myths start and who starts them. It’s been my experience that most often the people who start myths and rumors are those who stand to gain in some way. In this case, that would be those who produce food using traditional methods – chemical fertilizers, toxic pesticides, and drugs – but you can draw your own conclusions. Let’s just bust some of the most prevalent myths.
Myth 1: Organic farming is inefficient because organic food is more expensive than regular food. Busted! Inefficiency isn’t the problem. The problem is that farm programs and subsidies are there to benefit traditional farming and ranching and not organic farming and ranching.
Myth 2: Less food is produced per acre using organic farming than is produced per acre using chemical-based farming. Busted! When land is converted from chemical-based food production to organic-based food production, there is a temporary decrease in production per acre, BUT after about three years, organic acreage is just as productive as and often more product than it was when it was used with chemical-based farming methods.
Myth 3: The level of pesticide residue on nonorganic food is small and perfectly safe. Busted! Pesticide residue is limited by government standards, but nobody tells you that the “safe” levels are based on the levels deemed safe for adult men who weigh 154 pounds. They aren’t safe levels for small women or for little children.
Myth 4: Nonorganic food is just as nutritious as organic food. Busted! It’s been a while in coming, but there is solid scientific proof that there are up to 50% more antioxidants in organic fruit and vegetables that contain them, and up to 30% more vitamin C in tomatoes.
Types of Organic Coffee
There are two general plant types used for the production of organic coffee, Arabica and Robusta. Robusta, coffea canephora, is the hardier of the two most common types of coffee and organic coffee. Robusta has a higher caffeine content at 2.7% and is more resistant to diseases. As such it is easier to grow organic Robusta coffee because the plant is less likely than Arabica to need treatment for plant diseases and pests. Arabica, coffea Arabica, contains around 1.7% caffeine and is generally considered to produce a better tasting coffee. Its sensitivity to plant pests and diseases can make this high quality coffee difficult when the grower wishes to produce healthy organic coffee. A major producer of Robusta coffee is the country of Vietnam while major Latin American producers such as Brazil, Colombia, and Guatemala lead in production of Arabica coffee. Brazil out produces all nations in both types of coffee. While there are only two major types of plants that produce organic coffee there more types of organic coffee based on other factors.
Geographic Distribution of Coffee Production
Coffee is traditionally grown in the mountains. The plant originated in the highlands of Ethiopia but is now grown throughout the world. Moderately high altitude, good drainage, plentiful rain, and a daily cloud cover are ideal for virtually all types of organic coffee. For example, organic Kona coffee is grown in mountainous parts of the Hawaiian Islands while Panama mountain grown organic coffee comes from mountainous spine of the isthmus of Panama. Colombian organic coffee brands are virtually all Arabica coffee. The Colombian coffee growing district, the Cafetero, is in the Andes Mountains west of Bogota where coffee is grown at altitudes between 3,000 and 7,000 feet. There are newer varieties of coffee that can be grown at lower altitudes, without shade, and produce more volume of coffee. However, these brands typically do not product the best tasting and full bodied types of organic coffee.
What We Do to Organic Coffee
After organic coffee is grown, processed, stored, and shipped to organic coffee roasting companies the story just begins. A major part of the taste of organic coffee comes from the roasting process. In addition, more healthy organic coffee antioxidants are created or modified during roasting. Here is a quick rundown of the roasting processes, by temperature, that lead to varying degrees of caramelization, color change, and aroma.
Cinnamon Roast 195 °C (383 °F)
New England Roast 205 °C (401 °F)
American Roast 210 °C (410 °F)
City Roast 220 °C (428 °F)
Full City Roast 225 °C (437 °F)
Vienna Roast 230 °C (446 °F)
French Roast 240 °C (464 °F)
Italian Roast 245 °C (473 °F)
Spanish Roast 250 °C (482 °F)
The original coffee quality is slowly but surely modified as the roasting temperature is raised. With higher roasting temperature types of organic coffee are increasingly caramelized and may have even a burnt flavor as aroma. Tastes vary and so roasters commonly produce a range of types of organic coffee by roast type to satisfy their discerning customers whether their preference is Robusta or Arabica green coffee beans.
Organic Food History
The fact is that all farming and ranching was done with what are now considered organic methods before the 1900s. It’s not that farmers and ranchers were more conscious or more concerned about natural resource conservation or even more concerned about pollution. It was because there simply was no other choice. “Progress” hadn’t happened yet. The history of organic food production goes back to when our first distant ancestor put a seed into the ground with the intention of eating what the plant produced.
The fact is that the idea of “fertilizing” crops with anything other than manure wasn’t even on the horizon before Columbus discovered America. The Indians showed the colonists how to use fish as fertilizer and improve crop production.
Nonorganic food production techniques can be traced back to the first commercially produced chemical fertilizers in the early 1900s. Although pesticides made from natural ingredients like tobacco had been used for years, the first synthetic pesticides only began somewhere around 1940 with the discovery (invention) of DDT.
Somewhere along the way, we began to accept food that was produced using chemical fertilizers, toxic pesticides, and drugs as “traditional” farming and ranching methods. They are far from being traditional. Organic farming and ranching methods are actually traditional, and what are considered “traditional” methods are, in fact, the new kids on the block, so to speak.
Then during the late 1980s and early 1990s, people began to question the safety of “traditionally” produced food. The EPA now regulates the use of pesticides on crops. The FDA regulates the allowable levels of pesticide on food.
There are now standards that allow a certain level of pesticide to remain on the fruits and vegetables that are at our local supermarket as well as acceptable levels of antibiotics and growth hormones in the meat that is available. But historically – TRADITIONALLY – food was produced without the use of chemical fertilizers, toxic pesticides, and drugs.
Organic Food From China
There’s been a lot in the news about the problems with goods imported from China in the last few months. We’ve had toys painted with paint that contains lead, medications produced under anything but sanitary conditions, and fish caught in sewage canals. We’ve had produce contamination concerns as well. Given all of the problems with goods produced in China, it is kind of mind-boggling that anybody would think that “organic” food produced in China would actually be “organic.” But that is exactly what is happening.
It is more important than ever that those who want to eat organically produced food be aware of food labeling regulations. There is no way to enforce U.S. organic food production standards in China. We have no jurisdiction in China. Chinese farms are generally large and government-owned, and they do pretty much as they please. The labeling is the only defense that we have.
So-called “organic” food from China and other countries can be labeled “organic” according to American law. They cannot, however, be labeled “certified organic.” You’ll find foods labeled “organic” at big chain grocery stores and discount department stores like Wal-Mart. If they’re cheap, they most likely came from China, and they are most likely anything but what you would consider organic.
China is having a really hard time (if they are even trying) to understand the concept of organic food. The country still used DDT, for heaven’s sake! The government determines to deem a farm organic, but there is very little if any oversight, and decreased production is cause for alarm.
It is best to avoid food that is “cheap” and labeled “organic” but not “certified organic.” The odds are good that the food was shipped to the United States from China. The odds are also very good that the food is NOT really organic – much less certified organic.