The History of Coffee

Coffee Beginnings

According to one coffee tale (National Geographic on-line), around 800 A.D.an Ethiopian shepherd named Kaldi found his goats bouncing around a dark-leafed shrub with bright red fruit, which they were consuming in copious joyousness. Kaldi plucked some cherries for himself and soon learned of the enlightening stimulation that followed. Witness to the divine discovery, a monk plucked some berries for his brothers, and that night they were uncannily alert in their prayer practices.

The tale is of the discovery of the bean or cherry, but the history of brewed coffee shows up somewhat later, around 1000 A.D. By the 13th century Muslims were drinking coffee religiously, and wherever the Islam Empire went the dark broth went too. Apparently, Arabia had made it a point to export only beans that had been rendered infertile by parching or boiling. Legend has it that no coffee seed sprouted outside Africa or Arabia until the 1600s, when the crafty Indian smuggler, Baba Budan, reportedly left Mecca with fertile seeds strapped to his belly.

Coffee in Europe

From then on, every pot from the Turks to the Italians percolated with the magical black stuff, and in 1696 the Dutch founded the first European-owned coffee estate on colonial Java (now part of Indonesia). Then, In 1714, coffee would make its greatest journey ever, as Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu, in Paris on leave from Martinique, a French colony in the Caribbean, led a midnight heist of some clippings from Louis XIV’s royal coffee tree. Clieu got out clean and brought the bounty back to the island where the clipping, reportedly under armed gaurd, grew strong - so strong, in fact, that its offspring numbered about 18 million trees in only around 50 years.

Coffee in the Americas

Witness to all of the coffee commotion, Brazil, in 1927 asserted her desire for a piece of the coffee market by sending an undercover agent to nab some of the coveted crop. The mission was, of course, successful, leading to the World’s greatest coffee empire and bringing an AM cup of Joe to the masses where it was previously kept for the elite few).

And drink it we do. Seventy-five percent of all caffeine consumed in the U.S. is done so through the medium of coffee. Worldwide, we kick back over 400 billion cups of the stuff annually, and Brazil employs an estimated 5 million people in all aspects of the coffee industry. Further, according to the SCAA 1999 Market Report, there were 108,000,000 coffee consumers in the United States alone, spending an approximated 9.2 billion dollars in the retail sector and 8.7 billion dollars in the foodservice sector. The National Coffee Association found in 2000 that 54% of the adult population of the United States drinks coffee daily, and of those 18.12% drink gourmet coffee beverages daily. That puts the typical U.S. coffee drinker at about 3.1 cups of coffee per day.

Coffee Beneficial to Your Health

Not only does the world drink a lot of coffee, according to recent reports coffee can be benificial to your health. It might help relieve the persistance of gout (euric acid to collect in joints), and the Harvard School of Public Health showed that “long-term coffee consumption is associated with a statistically significantly lower risk for type 2 diabetes.” Further, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that “consumption of coffee, a major source of dietaryantioxidants, may inhibit inflammation and thereby reduce therisk of cardiovascular and other inflammatory diseases in postmenopausalwomen.” Various studies have also linked habitual coffee drinking with lowering the risk of liver cancer.

So, Martha, coffee is definately a good thing. Also, consider the following quote by Sheik Abd-al-Kadir as you savor your steamy shot of espresso: “No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.”

coffeecherry

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