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The Origins Of
Coffee
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It was the Abbysinians in eastern
Africa who were the world's first coffee drinkers. Europe got
a taste of the aroma and flavor of
coffee only in the latter part of the 17th Century.
In fact, it is believed that a goatherd from Ethiopia first
discovered coffee nearly thousand years ago. For a long time,
Yemen in southern Arabia supplied coffee to the rest of the
world.
Coffee seeds are found inside fleshy
red berries that grow on the coffee shrub. These seeds, or
beans as they are also known, are dried and ground to a fine
powder. This powder is then brewed
to make coffee. |
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One of the well publicized constituents of
the coffee bean is caffeine. One per cent of a coffee bean is
caffeine. Incidentally, even tea contains caffeine but the effect
that the caffeine in coffee has on us is different from the effect
the caffeine contained in tea has. The reason
for this is that the effect that caffeine has on us is due to
its combination with other substances, which are different in the
case of tea and coffee. When tea or coffee is consumed black, i.e.
without milk, then it affects the body differently than when
consumed with milk. When combined with milk, the effect of caffeine
is weakened. When isolated, caffeine is a bitter crystalline
compound. It has another name too - C8H10N4O2.
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And what happens inside our body when we
drink coffee? It acts on the cells in our brain, the nerve cells,
the heart and the intestine. In other words, it stimulates the heart
and the central nervous system. Coffee improves circulation in the
brain by dilating the vessels in the brain. As a result, nerve cells
are also stimulated. Well, increased blood circulation means added
work for the heart too! And what about the intestine? Coffee has a
mild laxative effect by working on the movement of the intestine.
Consumption of coffee results in increased secretion of gastric
juices. This is the reason why excessive coffee intake causes
"heartburn". However, different people react differently to the same
amounts of coffee. Obviously the levels of tolerance are
different.
Instant coffee that we are so familiar with
today was invented by Satori Kato, a Japanese chemist around 1900. |
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