Coffee is the second most consumed beverage in the world after water. Amazing isn’t it?
It seems that its name comes from the Arabic qahwa (“exciting”), then turn to the Turkish “kahve” then became “Italian coffee” or “coffee” in English. Some argue that the perola coffee derives from the word “Caffa”, name of the Ethiopian region where the coffee plant grows wild.
This drink was toasting and grinding the seeds of a plant that belongs to the family of the Rubiaceae, genus Coffea, red beans and small enough. The flowering of this plant goes along how rained throughout the year in major coffee-producing Equatorial zones, major: Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, Jamaica, Honduras, Ethiopia, Kenya, and many others.
There are over 100 species of Rubiaceae “Coffea” several, but the most common varieties are arabica and robusta.
There are many legends related to the discovery of this drink: one of the most widespread ones, tells about an Ethiopian shepherd who, after noticing that some of his goats were particularly nervous after eating a weird red Berry from a Bush. The pastor then tried to crush the berries along with some animal fat to produce a cream he used to spread in bread, eating that during his long trips and he found that to be very invigorating. But only after many years, Arabs tried to work the berries and boil them with water, thus creating the first coffee of history, although not yet prepared as we do today, which they called the “Arabian wine”.
The coffee doesn’t have only the ability to keep us awake longer, but it would seem that it could also “heal” our body.
A study by a Swedish University, showed that drinking coffee reduces the risk of breast cancer, almemo for women with the gene CYP1A2, which helps to metabolize estrogen and coffee. But not only, drinking coffee would also reduce the risk of prostate cancer. In fact, according to another study, this time from Harvard University, on a sample of about 50000 men, drinking 6 cups of coffee a day, have reduced by 60% the chance of getting sick.
However, not everyone can drink coffee because of its exciting power, and that’s one of the reasons that led to the creation of decaffeinated coffee. In nature, there is only one variety of decaffeinated coffee, the “charrieriana”, originally from Cameroon, while the rest of the coffee is decaf artificially.
It is impossible to remove all the caffeine from coffee, however in 5 cups of decaffeinated coffee, you’ll find the same caffeine than in a regular cup of coffee.
