5 Things You May Not Know About Coffee

• Scientists have discovered more than 800 different aromatic compounds in coffee.
• Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world (oil is the first.)
• One coffee tree yields less than half a kilo of coffee per year.
• In days gone by, Turkish bridegroom had to promise that they would always provide their new wives with coffee.

These internet fact lists are addictive. I ran across one this morning that contained all of the above facts about coffee. It had some interesting tidbits of information. Sadly, none of their sources were cited. However, one “fact” stood out to me as counter intuitive.

• Espresso Coffee has just one third of the caffeine content of ordinary coffee.

So I did a little research of my own and came up with this interesting summary of a study conducted by the University of Florida. They sampled coffee from several major retailers and found that in a 24 oz. sample the caffeine content ranged from 221mg caffeine to 367mg. Now even at the high end, 376mg, that is only about 16mg/oz of caffeine. The same study tested espresso shots ranging in size from 1.4 oz. to 1.9oz. and found the caffeine content ranged from 75mg all the way to 165mg. So the lowest caffeine content they measured was 53.5mg/oz. in espresso! So needless to say you might be getting less caffeine per beverage, but you are ingesting it much faster than you are with the regular brewed cup of coffee. It’s my guess that this rapid ingestion is what produces espresso’s famous jolt.

The entire list of coffee facts can be found here.

The PDF summary of the University of Florida’s study is here.

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Coffee & Fitness

Recent research indicates that having some coffee prior to a workout might actually be a good thing, despite long-standing advice to the contrary.

For years, people have believed that consuming caffeine would dehydrate the body or result in an electrolyte imbalance or that it might affect body temperature and have a negative impact on heat tolerance during exercise…

So says Lawrence Armstrong, a professor of exercise physiology at the Human Performance Laboratory at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. And he continues…

Our research indicates that none of these concerns is valid.

Caffeine is, in fact, a mild diuretic; this is the basis for the seemingly common-sense assumption that too much caffeine could result in dehydration. However, Armstrong explains that moderate caffeine intake - up to about 500 milligrams a day - is not enough to interfere with a workout. “Dehydration is about the balance of fluid intake and fluid loss,” he says. There also appears to be a tolerance associated with the diuretic features of caffeine; as anyone who drinks coffee regularly knows, these effects seem to diminish over time.

So the evidence to suggest coffee would hinder a workout is lacking. What’s more interesting is that the evidence that does exist seems to support the idea that caffeine somehow fights fatigue in long workouts.

Read more in the MSNBC article.

Does anyone have any personal experience to offer on this topic? Has coffee intake hindered/aided your workouts?

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Caffeine Prevents Cognitive Decline?

A four-year-long study by French scientists of over 7000 individuals, published in the August issue of Neurology finds that women over the age of 65 with high caffeine consumption rates (three cups a day or more) show significantly less cognitive decline than women with low caffeine consumption (one cup a day or less.) The greatest benefits were seen in - ummm, whats the word? - oh yeah, verbal retrieval. There was also an observable benefit in visuospacial memory in the three cup a day or more crowd. The protective effects of caffeine also increased with age. So for all the ladies 65 and up keep the coffee brewing. Sadly the study show no effects, positive or negative, for men in the same age group. You can read the abstract from the study here.

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Coffee and the Bourgeoisie

What is it about coffee – and coffeehouses – that makes it so agreeable to the bourgeoisie? Jakob Norberg explores this very question in a (semi-) brief social history of the dark, rich brew.

For Jürgen Habermas, the coffeehouse is a place where bourgeois individuals can enter into relationships with one another without the restrictions of family, civil society, or the state. It is the site of a sort of universal community, integrated neither by power nor economic interests, but by common sense. For Carl Schmitt, coffee is a symbol of Gemütlichkeit, or the bourgeois desire to enjoy undisturbed security. And for Alexander Kluge, drinking coffee provides the opportunity for people to talk to each other beyond the constraints of purpose-governed exchanges, to enter into “human relationships”.

It’s quite an interesting - though, somewhat lengthy - read. Check out the full article here.

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