Secret caffeine with 7X more antioxidants

So you’re interested in looking into your eating habits are you? Let's start with the first thing we turn to in the morning, coffee. Over 90% of Americans consume caffeine daily, where 75% choose coffee. In addition, the average person drinks over the 200mg of caffeine doctors recommend for pregnant women. Let’s explore the journey from seed to cup to better understand if our love for coffee will survive an exponentially growing population.

In today’s issue:

• Health: Caffeine and its benefits

• Feature Story: From bean to cup, what’s up?

• Early Adopters: Green tea and other greener choices

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

While this message may seem bleak, it's important to know why we need a greener tomorrow. Tune in every week to learn about small changes that make a big difference. That being said, consider professional advice (not me) when changing your lifestyle.

HEALTH

Caffeine and its benefits

Coffee has a beautiful drug, caffeine. While it doesn't give you energy, it does make you less tired and in fact happier. In science-terms, caffeine compounds block sleep inducers, called adenosine, while simultaneously making it easier for your body to get dopamine, the happy compound.

Depending on the style of coffee, a standard 8 oz (225 mL) serving provides 100mg of caffeine. This means the average American has 300mg of caffeine per day, slightly below the recommended 400mg. Caffeine from coffee generates spikes of calmness and relaxation while also feeling alert and focused. When you over-consume coffee the spikes result in feeling stressed, anxious and jittery. At the same time if you’ve built up a coffee tolerance and go a day without it you can feel withdrawal symptoms like headaches and irritability, sometimes within the same day.

FEATURE STORY

From bean to cup, what’s up?

Coffee is an incredible sensory experience, that often gets overlooked. It has a complex taste, inviting aroma & rich texture that can be made into a wide variety of drinks. The drink so engrained into society has a few glaring problems that ironically also get overlooked.

Where does coffee come from?

Coffee can’t be grown in the US but rather between the tropics in what is called the bean belt.

Luckily, the US has large coffee producing countries nearby in Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, & Nicaragua. Each country has its own distinct flavor, giving plenty of options for a variety of tastes. These Central American countries also have a geographic advantage for growing coffee. Their mountainous terrain ripens coffee fruits at different elevations allowing producers to harvest throughout the year; giving you a fresher bean in your cup of joe.

As the planet continues to change, experts predict this region will shrink putting more pressure on the water, land and waste coming from coffee plantations.

How is coffee produced?

Coffee beans come in 2 main varieties, Arabica and Robusta. Arabica makes up 60% of the global production and Robusta makes up 30%. 4 years after a coffee tree is planted, it starts to produce a fruit, called cherries. Over the next 10 months, the cherries ripen then are hand picked before being shipped off for processing. In processing, 80% of a coffee fruit is thrown away or repurposed into fertilizer. The beans are then packaged and shipped all over the globe to be readily available in grocery stores near you.

The harvesting process is fairly consistent except for Brazil producers. They mostly use machinery to harvest instead of by hand. By doing so, not all harvested fruit are ripe, leading to a lower quality bean. But what they lack in quality they make up for in quantity. Brazil is the world's largest producer of coffee (35% market share) and over double the second largest producer, Vietnam.

What to look for in sustainable coffee?

It takes a lot of resources to produce coffee. Coupled with the fact that the bean belt will have higher than average volatile weather patterns in the coming years, it isn’t looking too bright for coffee.

With these inputs, its safe to say, coffee is an energy intensive crop. To add insult to injury, the wastewater from processing a coffee cherry into a coffee bean creates a glue-like substance that makes recycling this water unlikely.

Lastly, it's a common practice to use a lot of pesticides to protect crops from leaf rust and the coffee berry borer which have devastated crops in years past.

EARLY ADOPTERS

Early adopter coffee-heads are more intentional with their coffee decisions. Some are focused on its source and others, are using its health benefits strategically.

Early adopters source Central American, shade-grown coffee to reduce shipping costs and improve biodiversity on coffee farms. While these are hardly displayed on coffee bags, there are packaging claims that are directionally helpful. Those claims are Rainforest Alliance, Organic & Fair Trade; however its rare to find coffee that has all 3.

For early adopters who still think these choices fall short, you’re not wrong. These folks are swapping out coffee for Green Tea which comes with some added health benefits like better caffeine digestion & exponentially more antioxidants to name a few.

This is because matcha has an amino acid (L-Theanine) that slowly releases caffeine instead of all at once. This lowers your odds of building up a caffeine tolerance/addiction while also avoiding the jitters and anxiety.

Green tea does have a different flavor profile compared to coffee. It can be describes as an earthy taste with an aroma of fresh-cut grass. While this may seem like a losing tradeoff, early adopters lean into the fact that matcha is one of the best sources of antioxidants on Earth making you stay younger and fight off chronic illnesses with ease.

When evaluating the inputs to producing popular caffeinated drinks, green tea also has some advantages. Although it largely comes from Asia, it uses significantly less greenhouse gasses compared to coffee that comes from Central America.

Others who find the coffee taste irreplaceable, drink coffee only when they need a higher level of focus like for an important work meeting, a school exam or an athletic event. They know the coffee effects only last a few hours and don’t want to build up a caffeine tolerance. Others who consume more regularly, are simply using less grounds to make the coffee bag last longer.

TIGHT 5

• Starbucks: sources coffee from 40 countries, the largest being Columbia, Brazil & Ethiopia.

• Green Tea Supply : 90% of green tea is grown in Asia where China (65%) and Japan (25%) dominate production.

• Coffee Peeing: Caffeine prompts your kidneys to release more electrolytes and water than you otherwise would.

• Weight Loss: Both coffee and green tea stimulate a hormone (GLP-1) to make you feel full without actually eating any food.

• Workouts: Caffeine can make exercise feel less tiring by blocking adenosine receptors.