Coffee - The Magic Bean

Antifatigue, antioxidant, antiaging

the ante just seems to keep going up on coffee, but you might not know that your favorite morning, afternoon, or evening drink has throughout its history been blamed for almost every malady and affliction imaginable, from causing impotency to nullifying sexual desire, along with drying up the brain, inducing blindness, and causing insanity. It's been banned at times by Sheikhs, Lords, Governors, Kings, and Popes, but coffee has always bounced back stronger every time.

Although in one version of this story from the Middle East, the discovery of coffee was declared a miracle and its discoverer declared a saint. It didn't take long for the coffee to become a convenient scapegoat for all sorts of maladies, bewitching accusations, and political subversion. It has even been labeled the devil's drink by the clergy at one time.

Now granted, caffeine is a powerful stimulant and if you don't experience it all the time, you'll get the full effect of it, which in most cases is that you'll be full of energy and can’t keep your mouth shut. People gathering together and talking to each other has always been perceived as an overt threat by oppressive or autocratic governments. And it was in the coffee houses where most of these conversations would take place. I guess a bunch of drunks slurring their words and slobbering all over each other didn't amount to much of a threat to those in power, but in coffee houses, where bright-eyed and bushy-tailed patrons would sit and discuss current events, lofty ideals, radical sentiments, politics, and criticisms of their current state, well, that has always posed a threat. Maybe it still does. Anyway, I guess maybe those Kings, Shahs, Sheiks, and Lords were in the end right. As many plots and anti-establishment movements that swept them from power were actually born out of those lively conversations that evidently took place in those aroma-filled dens of subversive iniquity. `

Come on, think about it.

A bunch of burly, brazen, idealistic renegades expounding their radicalism over a cup of tea? I don't think so. It was a good, hard, strong coffee, the kind that opened your eyes and your mind to bright innovative ideas and different alternative thinking that got things motivated. Perhaps even our own revolution and the throwing off of the yoke of British domination was the result of conversations that were held in those same dens of coffee drinking commiseration. I’d like to think so. In future entries of this newsletter, I'll be discussing the myths, tales, and fables of coffee lore along with all the actual health benefits related to the wonderful art of drinking coffee and our obsessive consumption of the second most consumed beverage in the world coffee.