Mind-blowing Facts About Coffee
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The more you know, the more you realize how little you know. Coffee has been around for so long and it has made a significant impact in so many cultures that its legacy and importance is vast enough to keep us forever intrigued.
Here is a list of the 16 most fascinating facts about coffee.
- The darker the roast, the lower caffeine content.
- Light roast coffee has a higher caffeine content, so if you are drinking coffee for energy purposes, pick the lighter over darker roasts.
- Finns consume 27.5 pounds of coffee per year
- According to the International Coffee Organization, adults in Finland drink on average 27.5 pounds of coffee per year while Americans drink 11 pounds.
- Coffee was first discovered in Ethiopia at around 800 AD.
- It was initially enjoyed as a fruit and a seed to chew on, and later monks started brewing it and consuming it as we do these days.
- In Turkey, not providing coffee to your wife was once considered solid ground for divorce.
- This was one of the very few reasons why a woman could seek a legal divorce.
- The world’s most expensive coffee requires an Asian palm civet to eat the cherries and digest the beans.
- This coffee sells for around $600 dollars per pound. After the coffee cherries are picked, they are fed to the Asian palm civet, a cat-looking animal (but not a feline!) typical of southern Asia. After the animal consumes the cherries, the coffee beans are found in the poop. These seeds are washed, dried, and later roasted.
- Between 1.6 and 2 billion cups of coffee are drunk per day.
- The Scandinavian countries do the heavy lifting to keep this number so high, with Finland, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, and the Netherlands as the world’s top consumers. It is estimated that this number will go up as younger generations of Chinese are becoming avid consumers.
- Sultan Murad IV decreed death to coffee drinkers in the Ottoman Empire.
- The sultan was known to dress as a civilian and walk the streets with a sword, ready to punish whoever was breaking the laws he was making.
- Coffee drinkers live longer than non-drinkers.
- Perhaps coffee drinkers are simply more alert about their surroundings, but the general consensus is that coffee improves cardiovascular health. In addition, coffee is rich in antioxidants, which are necessary to keep the body healthy and balanced.
- Coffee is widely consumed by athletes as a stimulant.
- Doping tests do not search for coffee nor caffeine in the athlete’s system, but coffee has proven to help athletes improve their performance. A study states that runners improve an average of 2 seconds faster across a 4,921ft (1,500m) distance.
- Coffee is one of the most labor intensive crops in the world.
- The process from planting a coffee bush to brewing a coffee cup takes between 2 and 3 years. On top of that, coffee is considered quite sensitive and the quality can change drastically if not properly dried, stored, or roasted.
- There’s such a thing as coffee tea, it’s called Cascara.
- Cascara means “shell” in Spanish, and in this case it refers exactly to the pulp covering the coffee bean. Surprisingly, it does not taste like coffee.
- Most of the coffee language comes from Italy.
- Even though coffee is not grown in Italy, Italians have been one of coffee’s greatest traders and consequently have established most of the terms we use for coffee.
- Technically, coffee is a cherry.
- As a fruit, coffee grows as cherries do and its composition is very much similar to all berries. Once the pulp is removed the bean inside is a seed or pit, comparable to a cherry pit.
- Adding cream keeps coffee warm for longer.
- There’s little scientific explanation for this, perhaps God simply understands and treats us to a warm coffee for a bit longer when we add cream. The data shows that coffee remains warm for 20% longer if we add cream to it.
- Someone drank 157 cups of coffee in six hours and seven minutes.
- A man from San Francisco broke the world record in 1927. There’s no record of what happened to him afterwards.
- The oldest cat to ever live, used to drink coffee every morning.
- This cat lived 38 years and his owner claimed to feed him eggs, bacon, and coffee every morning. Breakfast of champions?