Prescription Grade Organic Coffee
It seems that coffee lovers are all abuzz about the benefits of healthy organic coffee. Reduce your likelihood of getting Type II Diabetes, prostate cancer, endometrial cancer, or colon cancer? Try a cup or two of coffee every morning, noon, and evening. Want to keep all of those impurities often found in regular coffee away? Drink organic coffee, enjoy the taste, save the planet, and live longer! Here are a few of our thoughts about prescription grade organic coffee.
Do No Harm
When the United States started regulating prescription drugs about a century ago the gold standard was that a drug was to be safe to use. If one is thinking of drinking coffee because of the health benefits it might be useful to include the standard for prescription drugs. Prescription grade coffee ought to be prescription grade organic coffee. Regular coffee can have as many as 150 different impurities. USDA organic coffee does not. USDA certified organic coffee is grown in a sustainable manner, guarding the environment, and reducing to zero the number of unnecessary impurities. Organic coffee is grown without the use of herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and synthetic fertilizers. This is good for the coffee plant, good for ground water, good for the top soil, and good for you. The first thing for prescription grade organic coffee is that it should do no harm.
Reliably Help Specific Conditions
Here is where all of the recent buzz comes from. Scientific research by institutions such as Harvard and UCLA demonstrates benefits of long term coffee consumption. Our support of so called prescription grade organic coffee comes from the fact that statistics show that long term coffee consumption helps cut the incidence of Type II diabetes in half. The risk of lethal prostate cancer is likewise reduced to half and cancer of the colon, prostate, and endometrial are all reduced with the consumption of coffee over time.
What is the Dosage for Prescription Grade Organic Coffee?
It appears that for prescription grade organic coffee more is better. The association for Type II Diabetes is that women who drink four cups of coffee a day have half the incidence of a disease that affects 20 million Americans. For some conditions the most improvement is seen with six cups a day. In order to know what amount of coffee is most effective researchers will need to do prospective trials instead of the retrospective studies that have been done so far. In other words, the current evidence is based on people who enrolled in various long term studies and provided information over decades. Next researchers will need to convince large numbers of people to sign up for studies in which individuals agree to consume specific amounts of coffee, different for each sub group. Then the results will give us a dosage, so to speak. Also it is not always known if it is the caffeine in organic coffee or the organic coffee antioxidants that will cause the benefit. Separating the chemicals and testing each on a sub group of volunteers will help determine if the benefits of prescription grade organic coffee is from caffeine or antioxidants. In the meantime enjoy your organic coffee and the fact that it may well prolong your life.
How Does Organic Food Taste?
Most people who buy organic food say they do so because they want to avoid ingesting the harmful chemicals and drugs used to produce food by conventional methods. They also say that they buy organic food in order to help protect the earth and the air on our fragile planet. Then there are those who, in addition to the above-listed reasons for buying organic food, say that they buy it because it also just plain tastes better.
Recently the Soil Association, the major organic accreditation body in the United Kingdom, polled 813 people about their reasons for purchasing organic food. A full 95% said that they purchased organic food to avoid harmful chemicals that are so abundant in conventionally produced food, but taste was also very near the top of the list.
According to the poll by the Soil Association, fruits and vegetables scored the highest on taste (72% of respondents said organic tastes better than nonorganic). But meat scored at the top as well. Seventy-one percent said they preferred the taste of organic meat.
Other tests that have been conducted by various organizations and study groups, however, disagree. They claim that according to their taste tests, there was little or no perceptible difference between the tastes of organically produced food and conventionally produced food, and most taste tests ended in a tie. In some of the tests, the conventionally produced food even outscored the organic variety (raspberries and chocolate bars). Organic peanut butter won out over conventional peanut butter, but that was the only victory for our side.
However, taste isn’t everything. We all can agree on that, and if most of the taste tests ended in a tie for taste, they don’t end in a tie for good health.
Fresh Organic Coffee
The best coffee is fresh coffee and the best healthy organic coffee you will enjoy is fresh organic coffee. Green coffee beans keep their freshness for a couple of years. Roasted coffee beans remain fresh for a few months. Ground coffee freshness is measured in days or even hours. Here are a few tips to keeping fresh organic coffee fresh.
Coffee Storage
Fresh organic coffee will stay fresher if it is stored in a cool place and if it is in an airtight container. Organic coffee antioxidants coffee antioxidants are largely responsible for coffee flavor. Heat and oxygen are their enemies. Think cool, dry, and air tight when you store coffee.
If cool is good, is cold better?
If you buy coffee that is in an air tight container you can add to its shelf life by freezing it. But, once you open the container you let air and moisture inside. If you then repeatedly freeze and thaw the coffee you will keep adding moisture the shorten the shelf life of its flavor.
Convenience can kill coffee flavor. That favorite spot on the shelf by the stove works great when you need to find the coffee in the morning. But the same warm location spells doom for fresh organic coffee. Pick a spot away from the stove or any hot air vents.
Beans, Roasted Beans, and Ground Coffee
Panama Mountain Grown Organic Coffee is often shipped to the USA for roasting. So is coffee from Colombia, Brazil and Vietnam. This is because coffee starts to lose its antioxidants and its flavor as soon as it is roasted. This is why most coffee roasting happens in the markets where the coffee will be sold.
While green coffee beans last a long time the clock starts to tick when coffee is roasted. In fact some of the most important antioxidants that give coffee its flavor and many health benefits are created when the coffee is roasted. Because only the outside of the coffee bean is exposed to the air roasted coffee beans still maintain most of their flavor for months. Putting them in an airtight container just after roasting them helps as well. When you grind roasted coffee you exposed a much larger surface area to the air and that is what denies you a cup of fresh organic coffee.
Preparing Fresh Organic Coffee
An ideal way to enjoy fresh organic coffee is to roast your own coffee every day or so and only grind the coffee immediately before making coffee. This is typically why coffee house coffee is so good. In coffee growing regions of the world roasted coffee beans are ground and put in a cloth strainer placed over a container. Hot water is poured over the ground coffee and the result is a delicious cup of coffee. An old recipe from Midwest farm gatherings is to grind the coffee and add to a large pot along with an cracked egg of two. Add water and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat and let sit until the grounds settle. This recipe is meant to remove excess acidity from the brew. A French press typically works to make a nice cup or two of fresh organic coffee. However, the best coffee starts with good beans, usually Arabica, roasted and consumed shortly thereafter.
Avoid Cancer by Drinking Coffee
Who would have thought that you could avoid cancer by drinking coffee? Prostate cancer, endometrial cancer, and colon cancer may all occur less often in long term coffee drinkers. To avoid cancer by drinking coffee it appears as though one needs to drink as much as four cups a day although some research studies show benefits in individuals with lower levels of coffee consumption. In general the benefits of coffee in the case of reducing the incidence of cancer have to do with chemicals called antioxidants found in roasted coffee. The benefits noted are found in both regular and healthy organic coffee. The benefit of organic coffee antioxidants is that you get the health benefits without the as many as 150 contaminants that can be found in regular coffee. With the matter of how to avoid cancer by drinking coffee in mind let us look at the data.
Prostate Cancer
Drinking coffee, or preferably, drinking organic coffee reduces prostate cancer risk. According to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute coffee drinkers had a more than fifty percent reduction in the incidence of lethal prostate cancer compared to non coffee drinkers. This data comes from a study in which 47,911 men were followed for health related information from 1986 to 2006. The comparison noted above was for men who drank six cups of coffee a day versus those who drank no coffee. Researchers believe that phenolic acids in coffee are responsible for this effect. According to the researchers coffee drinkers had an overall reduction of prostate cancer risk of twenty percent but the more impressive number was the fifty percent reduction in lethal tumors. This is only the first example of how one can possibly avoid cancer by drinking coffee.
Colon Cancer
Recent research also indicates that more coffee and preferably more organic coffee can lead to less colon cancer. As with prostate cancer it appears that antioxidants obtained by roasting coffee are responsible for the health benefit here. As colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the USA this is an important issue. Green coffee beans contain an antioxidant, trigonelline. This chemical breaks down to methylpyridium during roasting. Trigonelline is the chemical that gives coffee its unique aroma and taste. This substance is also found in blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, raspberries and strawberries as well as artichokes, ground cloves, pecans, and walnuts. Because we drink lots of coffee it is coffee, preferably organic coffee that is what provides the vast majority of Americans with the antioxidant effects of trigonelline and its byproduct by way of roasting, methylpyridium. Substances called phase II enzymes have a protective effect against colon cancer. Higher levels of phase two enzymes correlate with a lower incidence of colon cancer.
Endometrial Cancer
Recent research indicates a reduced endometrial cancer incidence in coffee drinkers. This information comes from a study by the Harvard School of Public Health, the Nurses’ Health Study. Researchers found a twenty-five percent lower incidence of cancer of the lining of the uterus, endometrial cancer, in coffee drinkers. The reason for this correlation is not totally clear yet. However, coffee consumption reduces estrogen levels and high estrogen levels are related to a higher incidence of endometrial cancer. No matter what the reason it may be possible in the case of cancer of the endometrium to avoid cancer by drinking coffee.
Although we at www.BuyOrganicCoffee.org are not going to try to give medical advice it may be useful for individuals to ask their physician about these studies. In the meantime there is certainly nothing wrong with enjoying a good cup or two of organic coffee.
Grow Organic Vegetables in Pots
Guess what? You can grow your own organic vegetables in your own yard, or on your own patio, or even in your own garden – in pots! It’s a lot easier than you might think, too. Go to your local garden store and purchase pots, first. It’s better to buy environmentally friendly pots like clay or wood. It’s important for the pot to have drainage holes in the bottom.
The next thing you need is organic soil. Most garden centers sell packaged organic potting soil. (Unfortunately, most of this organic soil is still being packaged in plastic, but we are working on that problem.) You might also check with your local organic farm. Sometimes organic farms sell organic soil and natural composted fertilizer as well.
Now you need to decide what kinds of vegetables that you will raise. For your early attempts, it is probably better to choose vegetables that don’t need a lot of space to grow, like radishes, lettuce, or carrots. As you get better at organic gardening, you’ll be ready to raise other, more labor-intensive crops.
You need seeds, but you don’t want to buy those little packets of seeds that are sold everywhere. You want to look for seeds or plants that have been organically grown so that you get the full benefit from your crops. The produce will be no better than the seed that it comes from.
One of the greatest benefits, in my opinion, to gardening in pots is that the gardener has so much more control of factors like light and shade. Most vegetables are just as pretty as many “decorative” plants. You can display your organic vegetables just like you would any other potted plant. After you get the hang of growing organic vegetables in pots, you might branch out (pun intended) to growing your own organic herbs, as well.
Going Beyond Organic Food
More and more people today are insisting that the food that they eat be produced using organic methods. They don’t want their fruits and vegetables to be grown with the aid of toxic pesticides and toxic fertilizers. They don’t want the meat that they consume to come from animals that have been loaded down with antibiotics and growth hormones. They don’t want the foods that they purchase to have had food preservatives and flavor enhancers added during processing. In other words, they want food to be in its natural state as nearly as possible.
Usually the reason why people “go organic” regarding their food is because they are concerned about the toxic chemicals that they are ingesting. But the health of the planet is an even better reason to go organic than just simply to avoid toxins and going green means going beyond just organic food.
“Green” cleaning products are available today. Most of these products are just as effective as, and some are more effective than, the highly toxic alternatives. Sadly, most “green” products are still more expensive than the toxic versions, but those of us who believe that keeping our planet from dying in its own filth is important don’t mind paying a little extra at the checkout counter.
There are even “green” choices in clothing. The most important thing here is to look for a label that says “certified organic.” That label means that the cotton used in making the product was grown without the use of harmful pesticides and fertilizers or that the wool was sheared from sheep that weren’t fed antibiotics or growth hormones.
Going beyond organic food in an effort to protect our planet also means actively recycling and encouraging recycling of paper, plastic, metal, and other reusable materials.
CSAs and Organic Food
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a program in which many farms offer
subscriptions. Under this program, subscribers receive a weekly or monthly basket of
locally grown, in-season fruits, vegetables, flowers, eggs, and milk; sometimes other
products like coffee or tea are included as well. Most of the products in the baskets
are products that are produced on the farm, but they don’t have to be.
Under a CSA program, there is a relationship developed between the farm and the member’s
(shareholder’s or subscriber’s – several terms are used). Not all of the farms in the
CSA program are organic farms, although many are. By making a financial commitment to a
farm in a CSA program, people become “members” (or “shareholders,” or “subscribers”) of
the CSA. The membership entitles them to receive produce from the farm on a regular
basis through the growing season.
Usually memberships are paid for annually, but some farmers will accept weekly or
monthly payments, and some CSAs also require that members work a few hours on the farm
each week during the growing season. Regulations and requirements vary from farm to
farm.
The Community Supported Agriculture program is not one that has been well advertised
nationally. You might see some advertisements for locally owned farms that are part of
the program and you will have to determine which farms are organic and which are not.
This is, however, a method that those who want fresh, organically grown fruit and
vegetables that can be purchased locally.
More and more of the farms that are in the Community Supported Agriculture program are
organic farms. There’s still a long way to go, but organic farming is on the increase
along with the demand for organically produced food.
Consumer Demand for Organic Food
Price (whether the market likes to admit it or not) really is controlled by consumer demand for products and services. When demand falls, price also falls. When demand increases, price also increases. It’s a simple formula that isn’t very easily manipulated (although the oil companies are doing a pretty good job of manipulating it at the present, but that’s another article). We’re talking about organic food and the demand for it.
Today all health food stores and most herbal medicine stores carry some organic food items. Big chain grocery stores are also beginning to carry a line of organic products as well. The reason that more retailers are carrying organic products is because more consumers are demanding organic products. And, of course, the price is growing up. Price is going up because demand has increased and supply has not. There is less product desired by more people. Big demand + small supply = high prices.
I also like to think that people are just getting smarter when it comes to food choices. We’ve become a weight-conscious nation. You can hardly find a person who doesn’t know what calories, carbohydrates, and proteins are. Even little kids know the difference between saturated fat and unsaturated fat. Now the population is becoming more and more aware of how the food on grocery store shelves is produced. The problems with contaminated products from China raised awareness, I think, and that’s a good thing. (Not the contaminated products, but the awareness of the contaminated products.)
There is a rule, however, that says that what goes up must also come down. As more and more people demand organically produced food, more and more producers of food will choose to grow their products using organic methods. As more supply becomes available, the prices will go
down. It’s going to take a while, though.
Can Organic Food Help Depression?
“Food can have an immediate and lasting effect on mental health and behavior because of the way it affects the structure and function of the brain.” That is one of the statements in a recently released study concerning the effect of food on the mind.
Think about the things that go into our bodies every day; air, water, and food. Our bodies use these elements for our very existence. The body wouldn’t last long if any of these basic requirements weren’t met.
* Air: We know that inhaling smoke and other pollutants is detrimental to our physical as well as our mental health.
* Water: We also know that there are many diseases that can be contracted from unsafe drinking water, and some of these diseases can cause brain damage, among other things.
* Food: If air and water can affect our physical and mental well-being, then don’t you think that food might also affect our physical as well as our mental well-being? It stands to reason!
There are all kinds of “stuff” in food that the body uses as fuel. Sometimes we eat food just because it “tastes good.” But the food choices that we make can and do affect our brain function, and there really isn’t much doubt about that one. There is a much higher incidence of depression in countries where little fish is eaten. Scientists also know that schizophrenia is linked to a deficiency of antioxidant vitamins and essential fats. Yes, food affects the brain. What’s IN and ON that food also affects the brain.
The government has established “safe” levels of toxic chemicals that are allowed on traditionally grown fruits and vegetables. It has also established “safe” levels of antibiotics and growth hormones that are “safe” in meat products. The question is, safe for whom, and how much is too much? I think I’ll stick with organically produced meat!