15 Things You Didn’t Know About Coffee Obsession
March 09, 2018
Coffee is one of the most popular drinks in the world. However, there are a lot of things people don’t know about coffee and people’s obsession with it. Here are fifteen things you probably didn’t know about it:
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New Yorkers drink nearly seven times more coffee than other cities in the United States. It seems pretty obvious that people living in the City that Never Sleeps would need a little extra caffeine to get their day started. It isn’t surprising that the state, which is home to nearly 8.5 million people along and happens to be a top tourism state, boasts such a high level of coffee consumption!
- Coffee is great, especially in the morning when you’re looking for an extra shot of caffeine before you hit the books or get to your morning meeting. However, too much of a good thing can kill you! About 100 cups of coffee contain a lethal dose of caffeine. Of course, the small you are, the fewer cups it could take. According to Mitchell Moffitt, co-creator of the popular ASAPScience YouTube series, someone who is about to overdose on caffeine would begin experiencing mania and hallucinations. Moffitt explains that most coffee lovers wouldn’t be able to fit so many cups of coffee in their stomach, but if you’re a caffeine fanatic, you may want to switch to decaf!
- Talk about being obsessed with coffee! In the early 18th century, Western Europe was abuzz for coffee. Europe loved coffee so much that the late great composer Johan Sebastian Bach wrote a song called the “Coffee Cantata.” The song features a young girl named Liesgen who has troubled her father with her obsession for coffee. In the song, Liesgen’s father threatens to disallow her attendance at wedding parties and even her daily walks if she doesn’t stop being such a java junkie. Liesgen insists she can live without all the things her father threatens to take away. She says “coffee, I have to have coffee, and, if someone wants to pamper me, ah, then bring me coffee as a gift.”
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The first webcam was created so that people knew when their coffee was brewed or when the coffee was running low. The first webcam was invented at the University of Cambridge in the early 1990s. Allegedly, scientists at the university would come to a room outside of their lab called the Trojan room to get coffee. They would often arrive to find that all of the coffee had been drunk. Dr. Paul Jardetzky’s love for the caffeinated drink urged him to rig a camera to monitor the coffee pot. The camera took three images per minute, and researchers could access the images on their internal computer network. If this isn’t proof that an obsession with coffee can pay off, what is?
- If you love enjoying a hot cup of coffee, you should thank none other than the Pope. Pope Clement VIII is credited with bringing popularity to coffee in the Western Hemisphere after breaking a ban that was on the drink for a long time. According to history, coffee was first noticed by Islamic shepherds after they found that coffee beans had a stimulating effect on their sheep. Islamic clerics learned to cultivate the plant and it quickly spread throughout the Muslim world. At that time, Christians had been at war with Muslims for centuries in Spain, the Mediterranean, and the Holy Land. Europeans started calling coffee “Satan’s drink” because of its “infidel” origins. But one day, Pope Clement VIII was brought a hot cup of coffee. Legend goes that he said “this devil’s drink is delicious. We should cheat the devil by baptizing it.”
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Coffee is the second most traded commodities in the world, second to only to crude oil. According to Business Insider Australia, that puts coffee trade above commodities like natural gas, sugar, gold, corn, and more. The coffee trade industry is worth more than $100 billion worldwide. Coffee is exported from countries like Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Indonesia, Belgium, and of course, the United States. Brazil exports the most, raking in about $4.9 billion from its coffee exports. About 15.9 percent of the world’s coffee comes from Brazil, with the second most, 10.9 percent, coming from Vietnam, which makes around $3.2 billion on coffee exports.
- Coffee has become a daily must for many people around the world, but you often hear warnings about how coffee is bad for your body and can stain your teeth. A recent study found that coffee can prolong your lifespan. That’s right. If you love drinking coffee on the daily, you have a higher chance of living longer. In this study, researchers analyzed the link between coffee drinking and mortality in American men and women between the ages of 50 and 71. Drinking around six cups of coffee a day, according to observations in the study, was associated with lower risk of death from heart disease, accidents, injuries, infections, complications from diabetes, respiratory illnesses, and strokes. Although, if you love adding tons of sugars and cream to your coffee, you may want to cut back a little to get the full benefits that coffee has for your health.
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Even animals are crazy for coffee. Pam civets, a catlike creature, loves to each coffee cherries, the fruit that holds the coffee bean. It is also a popular snack among elephants. Be careful, though, apparently the beans from the cherries can be harvested, already hulled, from their dung. If you want to try it, you’ll have to crack open your piggy bank. With a smooth, caramel taste, elephant-dung coffee retails for nearly $500.
- Craving a cup of coffee is one thing, but did you know you could be addicted? Coffee makes the list of the top 10 addictions in America, along with drugs like heroin, marijuana, and nicotine. Why is coffee so addictive? Caffeine is a stimulant, meaning that it can help wake you up and get a start on your day. Regular use of it, however, can result in a physical dependence on it. Since nearly 83 percent of adults in America alone admit to drinking coffee, and because America is the world’s biggest consumer of the beverage, that means that coffee addiction is actually ramped in the U.S. It is common for those trying to drink less coffee or those trying to slowly rid themselves of a dependence on caffeine to develop withdrawal symptoms like headaches. Eventually, the symptoms pass.
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A recent survey revealed that half of all coffee drinkers would rather give up something else they love in order to continue to drink coffee. According to the survey, nearly 55 percent of the participants would rather give up their figure by gaining 10 pounds. About half of the participants said they would rather give up their cell phone, another common addiction, than go without it. Lastly, the survey showed that about 52 percent of the people who took the survey would much rather go without a shower in the morning than missing out on their cup of Joe.
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Energy drinks have less caffeine than most coffees. According to a study that compared energy drinks to coffee, coffee had a higher concentration of caffeine. For example, the study found that one grade coffee from Starbucks has as much caffeine as four-and-a-half cans of Red Bull. Keep that in mind next time you wag your finger at your friend who loves energy drinks.
- Although most only use coffee grounds to make their coffee in the morning, the grounds have tons of uses that you’ll be obsessed with trying after you read this! After you brew your cup of coffee, keep the grounds and reuse them. There are a ton of ways to reuse coffee grounds. One popular way some reuse their grounds is their brewed grounds as a deodorizer in their fridge. Coffee has a way of eliminating smells. If you have every been into a perfume or candle store, you may have noticed that some have coffee beans or grounds available around the store. This is because coffee neutralizes scents so that you can fully appreciate the smell of each perfume or candle. You can store your coffee grounds in a container and use them as a natural defoliant on your skin. Not only will it help remove dead skin around your body, it will also leave your skin smelling wonderful.
- We know that great musicians like Johan Sebastian Bach were mused by coffee. Did you know philosophers like Kant, Voltaire, and Kierkegaard were also obsessed with the drink? It turns out that Kant couldn’t resist a good cup of coffee. According to Thomas De Quincey, who wrote a book on Kant, the philosopher would have a cup of coffee right after dinner. Voltaire, an 18th century philosopher is said to have consumed about 40 to 50 cups of a coffee and chocolate mixture a day! Even though he lived into his 80s, his doctor warned him his coffee obsession would kill him. Lastly, Kierkegaard had his own ritual for consuming the beverage. He would take a bag of sugar and pile it to the brim of his coffee cup and the poor in strong, black coffee. Of course, we now know how damaging a cup full of sugar can be on your teeth.
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Coffee is so loved in Turkey that it is use throughout the wedding celebration. Before a traditional Turkish wedding, it is customary for the bride-to-be to make coffee for her family and the groom’s family when the groom comes to ask for her hand in marriage. Because of this, the bride-to-be must make coffee for her groom. Sometimes, the bride-to-be will use salt in the coffee instead of sugar. This can be used to show her lack of a desire to marry the groom, or can be used to test if the man is patient. Throughout this process, the groom’s family is judging the bride-to-be and her coffee-making skills. During the wedding, the groom must vow to always provide coffee for their wives. Not providing the coffee is “grounds” for divorce.
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People loved coffee so much, it was one of the first foods to be freeze dried. Freeze drying is a process used to preserve perishable material, mostly foods, for transport. It was developed in 1906, mostly to freeze dry specimens for the lab. Freeze dried coffee is basically instant coffee. It was developed after World War II. During the war, a lot of commodities like coffee and sugar were scarce around the world. To freeze dry the coffee, the extract of it is frozen and broken into small pieces. Then, those pieces are sifted and sorted by size. When they are still frozen, they are placed on metal trays in a drying chamber. This chamber creates a vacuum that speeds up the drying process. The chamber is also warmed. The previously frozen water on the pieces expand to about 10 times its volume. This is then removed and the freeze dried granules are removed from the chamber and packaged for distribution.
