Chef Jose Mier on This Ubiquitous Drink
It doesn’t matter if you’re in Seattle or Sun Valley, CA. People love (or should I say are addicted to) their coffee. I write about various foods on these pages but there’s a specific drink many of us can’t live without each day and that’s coffee.
Coffee, a drink esteemed by lots of folks; a beverage eschewed by others. Its main competition, tea, appears to offer a plethora of better health advantages; a drink for the New Agers and those who wish to get away the decadence of the brown, caffeinated drink. The fact stands that tea can just be as helpful as its preparation, which in some cases may have as much sugar as a can of soda. To understand coffee, one must comprehend the core value of tea: that the brewed leaf itself is the only healthy part. Whatever else is decadence.
To that, the bean for coffee in and of itself consists of a number of advantages to health. The culture of coffee, like the cult of tea drinkers, contains a lot of excess trimmings. Along with cream, sugar waters down the benefits of coffee, where it turns the brew into drinkable sweet.
Caffeine can ruin the nervous system, however that does not make it synonymous with coffee. Different kinds of coffee (all prepared differently) will yield different levels of caffeine content. Serving size also enters into play. To those conscious caffeine, the obvious option can be discovered in decaffeinated coffee. Such an alternative could downplay the favorable impacts of the beverage. Coffee is abundant in the B vitamin niacin; and in recent studies has actually been revealed to have antioxidant-like effects on the body by getting rid of complimentary radicals. As a caution, these benefits only occur with a balanced drinking practice. Using too much sugar or cream can show to be deleterious, while too much coffee itself presents lots of long-lasting risks. True, coffee does provide niacin (the familiar B vitamin), it also limits the body from the uptake of other vitamins. And depending on the type of your brew, coffee can contains acids that have been associated with ulcers. Symptoms like these might sound off-putting, however they exist only in the long run for an abusive drinker. A daily cup presents no risk to the average person.
The usage of a French press, with its absence of a filter, will keep the acids in the brew (though some claim it assists the coffee to taste better). All informed, for those who say no to decaf, the granules you get in instant coffee contain reduced caffeine than regular and less fatty acids. When compared to their higher-quality relatives, the instant variety ought to please the careful drinker.
Using sugar and or cream dilutes the advantages of coffee, as it turns your brew into a type of drinkable sweet. Various kinds of coffee (all prepared differently) will yield varied levels of caffeine material. To those sensitive to caffeine, the obvious alternative can be discovered in decaffeinated coffee. The use of a French press, with its absence of a filter, will keep the acids in the brew (though some claim it helps the coffee to taste much better). All informed, for those who decline to use the decaffeinated version, the crystals in the instant variety include a lower amount of caffeine as well as reduced fatty acids.
