Why is Coffee big business?
There are coffee shops popping up everywhere and even in a recession we are being told that business is booming so much that we can have on our local high street 8 coffee shops in a tiny stretch and no signs of any closing down.
Coffee is the second largest
traded commodity in the world
Just stop and think about this – that is huge. Imagine how much coffee is being consumed and has anyone asked why?
2015
$48 billion dollars – estimated retail value of U.S coffee market (1)
2015/16
151.3 million of 60kg bags of coffee – world coffee consumption (2)
- Why are coffee sales on the increase?
- Why is coffee so ‘needed’ in today’s world?
- What are the harmfull effects?
- Why is coffee a multi billion dollar industry?
- Why are there large ‘drive through’ coffee shops?
- Who are the people who drink coffee?
- Has anyone really studied those addicted to coffee?
- What does coffee really do to our moods?
- What does coffee do to our physiology?
- Why is coffee an appetite suppressant for some people?
- Why do we need coffee first thing in the morning?
- Why do we need coffee in the afternoon to keep us going?
Why are there no news headlines about the side effects of coffee?
Coffee is a drug and the dictionary definition of the word ‘drug’ –
a substance which has a marked physiological effect when taken into the body.
Why is it a drug?
We all know why – coffee has a substance in it called caffeine.
So what does the dictionary have to say about the word caffeine?
a compound which is found in tea and coffee plants and is a stimulant of the central nervous system.
- Why is this not a government health warning?
- Who makes the law saying it is ok to give us unlimited amounts of coffee when we want, without anyone assessing the risks and potential harm it is doing to our human body?
- Why is the media not reporting the simple fact that coffee is affecting our central nervous system which happens to affect our brain as it is interconnected?
I am no medic or academically qualified but I have a basic understanding of Anatomy and Physiology and our central nervous system plays a huge part and just the word ‘central’ tells us it is at the core of our whole being.
How can we ignore or negate that fact?
This is serious and we the ordinary people need to know more about what coffee and tea are doing to our bodies when we consume it.
So with these basic simple facts, we the reader can work out that coffee alters our natural state. It is changing something on the inside, so the body is not in harmony which is called homeostasis.
To keep things super simple – if we drink coffee we are guaranteed to feel stimulated, which means we get our buzz, wake up, fix, mood elevation, push and drive to get what we need done.
We can buy super strong coffees which means extra ‘shots’ of caffeine playing havoc in our central nervous system. Add sugar to this and even more buzz and a heightened state.
Does it last? No – we all know that is why we need more and more to the point where many are addicted to coffee but not aware as there is nothing out there telling us how harmfull coffee really is.
It has become a fashion thing now in the UK. A trendy place to ‘hang out’ meet socially and it is also ok to sit with a laptop all day and much better than being in our own home as we get the exact coffee we want – bespoke tailor made, order to perfection.
What about all the choices – the list is endless and the ‘barristers’ are under pressure to make sure they get it right as the espresso, cappuccino, lattes and all the rest of the coffee variations have to be exact and the queues are out of the door with demand.
So we all know about ‘supply and demand’. Basic economics tells us if there is a demand for anything then the trade will supply. So if there were no customer demand then coffee shops could not open next to each other and expect to do business and make profit.
Profit – anyone in the coffee business is on a winner because no matter where we open our business there will be a demand. I lived in a very poor area of England 10 years ago with really nothing going on in the town centre except a few shops. The majority were unemployed and suddenly a giant well known coffee shop opens with the comfy sofas and all the trimmings.
Guess what? – within six months it was packed out anytime of the day.
Why is it that we need coffee?
- Could it be possible that our body needs it to function?
- Could it be possible that we have chronic exhaustion?
- Could it be possible that we are not willing to address this exhaustion?
- Could it be possible we need to be stimulated to get through the day?
- Could it be possible that coffee does not allow us to feel our natural state of being?
- Could it possible that we drink coffee to numb ourselves?
- Could it be possible we know coffee is a bad habit but we need the buzz it gives us?
Could coffee be a solution to help us not deal with what is really going on?
Exhaustion cannot be discounted here – Think about it from a very basic simple perspective.
If we are not exhausted, then we would have the vitality. This means we would feel alive and have the energy to do what we need to do in our day. But if we are exhausted, we would need to be stimulated to keep going because without the stimulation we simply would not be able to get out of bed and get going.
Without the coffee, tea or anything that has caffeine or sugar in it, how would we really be?
How would our vitality levels be?
With coffee as our best friend, what would our life be like without coffee?
Is it possible that coffee is stopping us being real and feeling what is really going on?
Possible?
References
(1) (2015, December). U.S Speciality Coffee Facts & Figures. Special Coffee Association of America. Retrieved April 26, 2017 from
http://www.scaa.org/?page=resources&d=facts-and-figures
(2) (2016). The Current State of the Global Coffee Trade #CoffeeTradeStats. International Coffee Organization. Retrieved April 26, 2017 from
http://www.ico.org/monthly_coffee_trade_stats.asp
Comments 77
I have never drank coffee, when I tried it in the past it would make me racy, messed up my sleep, I could not concentrate. For some reason I listened to my body and decided that I did not want to drink coffee. I am so glad I have not had to rely on coffee in my life.
You are living proof Ken Elmer that coffee messes up your sleep. The thing is it contains caffeine which is a drug and there is no getting away from that. What is bizarre is that it is classed as normal and not a drug and we are not really seriously looking at the consequences of this harmful substance.
What is happening is the rise in coffee consumption worldwide and this is what is scary and needs to be discussed more. How I done it was caffeine free and then even that made me feel headachy so it then became an absolute No No.
I used to use coffee when I felt like I needed to live in bed or get buried in the ground AND I did not want to accept this or deal with the inconvenience of needing to slow down, stop or change what or how I was doing things… After using medications to relieve the symptoms of depression I discovered that coffee was the most effective SHORT TERM anti depressant ever!! Friends and family let me know that when I had coffee my personality became bulldozer-like; obliterating my usual sensitivity and presence. I traded the feeling of ‘Me-ness’ (and me-in-exhaustion) for a blast of happy speed and functional drive… but my exhaustion only got worse and my quality of life too bad to ignore… I have been stimulant free for over 4 years and the ‘best friend’ I choose now is ‘me feeling ME, where I am really at’. When I am paying attention to where I am, I notice I’m tired before I reach the level of exhaustion that takes a lot more intensive care to come back from! The more honest I am about ‘how I feel’ the more quickly I know when I’m getting into trouble (like sliding down that slope of exhaustion) and I also feel and know what I need to do to get back on track; on my own path of real health, well-being and living life as ME.
What a super duper blog. This really asks some deep questions and even though I am not a coffee drinker and was never really hooked, I can think of countless other things I’ve used to keep going and stimulated. It also makes me wonder if this is why the world is so busy – do we need to keep going so as not to feel the exhaustion?
You make a great point here Shevon by asking the question about not wanting to feel the exhaustion. I reckon we are onto something here because if you deal with your exhaustion as I have in my case and I know my husband has too, we do not seem to need those outer stimulations like coffee or other sugar buzzes to keep going. In fact our body seems to make things quite loud and clear when we are tired so we then have the responsibility to make a sensible choice and take note or do something irresponsible and get the hit, the buzz, the fix to keep going. The latter is really no longer an option in my life as there most certainly is another way.
Oh my God, this is so to the point. No excuses, no sneaking out, no judgement. Real questions and simple answers. I agree, Bina Pattel, you’re speaking truth.
Just recently I found out that chocolate contains high amounts of caffeine and it was then that I understood why it is so addictive, no less than coffee or tea.
Now may I add to your fantastic list of questions the following: Why is it that I had to be 36 years of age to finally be educated about the fact that chocolate contains caffeine? Didn’t I want to know? Doesn’t the industry want us – parents – kids to know?
Great you talk about this Felix and my chocolate blog will cover more on this soon.
For now lets talk about your question – why at aged 36 were you finally educated on the fact that chocolate contains caffeine which we all know is a drug and is addictive.
So why?
Are those educating us eating chocolate and having caffeine daily?
Are those producing coffee and chocolate on a winner and so sales would go down if we knew the truth and that would mean less money for them?
Who actually benefits by not bringing all this information to public awareness?
Where is our part as an individual in all of this?
Where is our individual responsibility?
Who do we blame as lets face it we have become a culture of blame?
Why is the media not informing us of the true harm of caffeine?
Why are caffeine drinks on the rise?
These are the questions we should all be asking and this website is dedicated to bringing this all to public awareness.
I like that going Stimulant Free – that would be great news for the health service.
It would be amazing if there were studies done on people who are stimulant free and how much vitality they have. I for one have bags of energy now compared to my chocolate caffeine days and I loved the glucose drinks too – orange fizzy and a real blast up my nose, down my throat and straight to my head. I can recall being very racy and with it came an anxiousness and the drive to do more and be more and of course save the world.
I have to admit I found the coffee habit a tough one to kick. Why did I quit? After some time, it disturbed me that I was seeking out coffee everyday, like I was looking for a hit. Another reason was financial—add up the cost of buying a coffee everyday for one year and you could just have paid your phone bill for the year. The other clincher was I started a new relationship with somebody who didn’t drink coffee so I had the inspiration for what was possible.
At the time the only way I could quit was to replace it with something else, which was other forms of tea which still got me the buzz. Not the best and it took a long time to not ‘miss’ the taste. I am at a point now where the thought of drinking coffee is enough to make me gag, not so much from the taste but the knowing of how much it would disturb my body which I now feel I am more connected with. Life in the long run is just so much simpler without it.
Oh and my teeth are better too, they were getting pretty stained and smelly.
You make a great point here Marian about ‘replacing’ the coffee with something else. This tends to be what we all do. Give up something and have another thing lined up to replace it. It is like changing the flavour of ice cream from chocolate to vanilla but the TRUTH is – it is still ice cream. What I mean is that replacing it with something else is not really the answer as our body is still copping it.
What we need to look at is why. If we stop and just ask why do we need to drink x amount of coffee every day then at least we begin the process of maybe one day getting to the answer.
In my case it was simple – I was exhausted, very bored with life and needed a buzz. I hated the smell of coffee on my breath but hey ho I got comfortable with the new coffee shops everywhere and the cakes they came out with was another reason to hang out there. It was part of a lifestyle I chose and it left me bloated, addicted and racy like hell inside my head. Sleeping then became another issue and I know the caffeine had something to do with it.
This is a super blog, so true and practical.
Coffee is absolutely a drug. The first time I tasted black coffee it was bitter, left a bad taste in my mouth, and I wondered how anyone could drink the stuff.
Years later, I discovered that it wasn’t so bad when you added milk and sugar. I soon became a regular coffee drinker, and when I tried to quit, would get the most awful headaches. I eventually did quit, suffering through headaches and crankiness for awhile first. After that, whenever I had even a small amount of coffee I felt raciness like I never had before. If these are not clear signs that coffee is addictive, I don’t know what is.
Your comment Julie Goodhart has made me realise that I got to a stage where coffee was giving me headaches so I opted for a quarter shot and heaps of milk which then became soya milk, convincing myself I was getting ‘healthy’. I had to have the froth thing as that brought me great comfort and I would never bother having a coffee without a cake. What was the point if you can’t have the cake. Feeling instantly tired straight after and sluggish was totally ignored for many years and looking back now I know it was all covering up my total and utter exhaustion.
Once I got my sleep sorted by getting early nights consistently, I needed less and less of that caffeine stuff and eventually made the choice to say No. That was over 8 years ago.
No regrets now and a mind that has clarity and is not racing around or suffering from any form of sleeplessness.
The other day at work this man was drinking tea and his two male colleagues were saying: tea?? Tea is for when you are sick or gay. Really, I said, well, and also for gorgeous women sitting behind reception, no coffee for me, I don’t need coffee. We started talking about coffee. Coffee has become so normal, we don’t even think about the fact that we need it instead of just liking to drink it.
Interesting how people view coffee and tea Mariette and great that you are openly discussing what you know is an addictive drug.
I agree with you that ‘coffee has become so normal’ and its like we have not quite clicked that the industry is just growing and growing and it is a lifestyle choice that is affecting their natural state.
I am studying Corporate and Professional Stress Management and it is very clear that our lifestyle choices have an effect on our stress levels and that we are creating this way of living. What is missing is some self awareness.
Imagine living in a constant state of anxiety, which of course means our body is operating in an un-natural way. This tension is then with us during the day and it does not go away when we sleep. So next day we do the same thing and our choices keep us functioning and then one day it gets too much and something happens.
As the blog says – could it be possible that we are actually exhausted and if we stopped and asked what is causing the exhaustion and why, we may not need to ‘up’ the amount of coffee we drink.
The one that hits the nail on the head for me is that “Could it be possible that coffee does not allow us to feel our natural state of being?” It is really pure evil not pure gold as they advertise on the tv! We of course allow it and are great pretenders to say we aren’t aware of the damage being done, but we do know. Great article Bina, love this website.
Love it Vanessa about the pure gold – I think that was the brand we used to buy until we went caffeine free.
So what you are saying in your comment is that on some level we do know and that we are aware of the harm being done but we choose to dismiss it, ignore it and pretend we don’t know. If this is the case, then who are we fooling? Who benefits? Who suffers? What changes?
What I have come to realise is the coffee industry is huge and check out the prices – it sure is not el cheapo and if you add up the daily visits to the coffee shop for your double espresso, cappuccino, latte or whatever it is, this add up over the year.
What we need to be ask if we want true change –
Is drinking coffee a wise choice?
Is this a Responsible choice?
Do we have a Responsibility to look after our body and take note of blogs like this which are not alarming but just presenting things we may not have been aware of before?
When I was a child my parents used give us a big bowl of coffee with milk and sugar at breakfast. No wonder why I felt nauseous and racy every day ! It also gave me stomach ache. My grand-mother used to have a cafetière ready on her stove all the time and coffee was drunk all day and my mother loved her cup of coffee with thick cream and sugar in it. Now the smell of coffee revolts me and my body knows that I should stay clear of it. It is very obvious to me that coffee is a poison to both our nervous and digestive systems. Coffee is certainly altering our natural state of being and this is about time our Health Services realise the damage it does to our health.
What your comment is confirming Maryline is that coffee has been around a long time and if you grand mother was drinking it all day, it sure tells us that even back then it had to be addictive as this blog is saying. The caffeine inside coffee is a drug and there is no getting away from that.
I like what you say that it is now obvious to you ‘that coffee is a poison to both our nervous and digestive systems’. I would add that if it affects any system or any part of our body, then in some way it actually affects the whole.
I too used to ‘love’ my coffee, every single day I needed its lift and i viewed it as a real treat. Then something really interesting happened, I stopped drinking it….
a month later, it was Mothers day, I decided to drink it again as treat- I had about 1/4 of a cup and I had to stop, then and there- it tasted bitter and was jarring. It made my nervous system feel racey and out of control. I thought, oh my goodness, this is foul, this is what it used to do to my body all along, and I never noticed until now- once the normality of it in my body had gone, I could actually feel what it did to me.
That was the last cup of coffee I ever had, never again did it temp me, and my energy levels have been much more steady. I noticed I used to use coffee to mask my exhaustion, now I simply get more rest, and my body thanks me for it.
Thanks for sharing your take about how you gave up coffee Felicity. I reckon more people would consider de-caff or even asking why they drink coffee if they read this blog or learned more about what it does to our body.
News headlines like this would not only be interesting, but our society benefits as less people would be dependent on this drug if they knew the harm it was causing. Just because something is not classed as a drug on some level does not make it safe for our human body to consume.
Imagine the loss to the coffee industry which is growing by the day if we started saying no or at least reducing the amount we drink.
Brilliant article – for a much needed conversation about coffee. When I was 20 I tried drinking coffee and it made me ill immediately – sweats, palpitations, and diarrhoea – I knew my body couldn’t tolerate it so I never drank it. I always felt that it must be pretty strong stuff if I had those immediate effects from drinking it. I do wonder what it is doing to our bodies given the high levels of coffee consumption in society today – and that caffeine is also in pain killers and energy drinks too. If we had a day where no one on the planet drank coffee or had caffeine I wonder how productive we would be?
Great points you make here Jane Keep. Caffeine is in pain killers and what about those energy drinks. When I commute early mornings I see loads of people with the energy drinks and of course we know they are addictive.
I also think about all the packaging that is wasted as we go and buy this stuff and then just discard it and then countries like UK who are not quite in the re-cycling in a big way means landfill sites are struggling to cope.
I love what you say about what if the planet stopped coffee/caffeine for just one day – how productive would we be? I reckon there would be loads of tension, headaches and time off work for starters. So we all know how productive that would make us if we were to be totally honest.
Dear World
I wrote this comment on a blog which talked about “socially accepted norm” and it felt appropriate to share it on this blog as it makes total sense.
What on earth is normal these days is so abusive and we champion it, get behind it and campaign about it.
The bizarre thing is someone out there is already thinking of the next thing – did you know there is a wrist band for caffeine. So you get the hit going straight to the blood stream because the caffeine molecules are small enough. Their selling points are it gets to you faster (you know how the world loves fast fast, give it to me now) as it does not have to go through the digestion process and you will not have smelly breath or stained teeth.
And by the way a doctor developed this and now works for the pharmaceutical industry.
There is more – they are now working on new formulations to make the dose stronger.
HELLO – is anyone reading this.
Next –
Caffeine is a drug.
Caffeine is a chemical alteration.
Caffeine races your energy artificially.
Caffeine takes you away from yourself.
Caffeine is an elevated version of you.
Got the above list from Serge Benhayon Esoteric Medicine 12 Audio.
This man has got his finger on the pulse. He sure knows his stuff.
I work in a coffee shop and I can confirm that coffee sales are through the roof as are our queues most of the time. People comment that they need their morning fix and people drink it when they are sick or not feeling well to keep them going. For many it is a daily ritual, whether stopping to get one on the way to work, stopping off on their morning walk for one, calling in mid morning to get one or sitting in the afternoon sun and enjoying a cup. So with what you have presented Simple Living Global we are as a population revving up our nervous system so much that it will be very interesting to see what happens in the future as its no longer a flat white with one shot but a super cup with 4 plus shots. If one shot of coffee no longer peps us up, then just how exhausted are we when we have to ask for 4 shots in a coffee? Now that’s something worth pondering on.
Great to have your comment here Sally as a coffee shop worker. The simple and logical reason why many now need more shots of coffee to keep going is because they are addicted to the drug caffeine and because the tension inside them has increased and more is needed to keep going to not deal with it. I trust this makes sense and if not, it is worth staying open to and pondering on as much is said in this blog and comment.
Time to really read and feel how on earth have we got coffee legalised when it alters our natural state.
It really doesnt make any sense to have the authorities say that coffee is a drug and that caffeine affects our central nervous system but there hasn’t really been any serious studies about the harmful effects that coffee has on our bodies. The statistics for 2014 are huge-150.2 million 60kg bags consumed, thats over 9 billion kgs of coffee in one year!! These figures are astonomical and very worrying considering the potential harm of this insidious and widely accepted social drug. Your blog asks a lot of ‘possible’ questions that need answering but I have another ‘possible’ question.
Is it possible that the people who could answer your questions, need their coffee just as much and therefore could not or never would ask those questions because they then would have to look at why they would need coffee to get themselves through the day.
Top comment Tim Bowyer and a great question from you.
Correct people need their coffee and reading the questions on this blog would require some level of Responsibility and that is start to question WHY?
Why should be on our daily menu with absolutely everything we consume if we are ever going to see real change.
Next – I agree with you that there are no serious studies about this socially accepted drug. Drug is what it is and there is no getting away from that fact.
Could it be possible that the industry is huge and making billions so they would never fund a study and those in positions of power all need their coffee and if there were the minority asking they would ignore it because what government is going to say coffee is a drug and needs to be classed as such.
It is for us as individuals who need to make the change and know that one by one we do make a difference. This blog, the writer and others are ensuring that the tides are turning slowly.
How have we got coffee legalised when it alters our natural state? Great question Simple Living Global as it really got me to stop and question –
How did this happen?
What is the difference between coffee and illicit drugs apart from their legalised status?
Anything that alters out natural state is not good for our true health and well-being and we know this by the simple fact that we wouldn’t give either to a baby or young child.
Why do these harmful substances become acceptable when we’re older?
Is it because we have moved far away from living in our natural state by then?
You are asking some great questions here Shevon.
How on earth did coffee get legalised when it alters our natural state.
Who passed the law? Was it coffee lovers?
Was it because governments saw the huge money making commodity it is?
There is a clue here if you think about how coffee sales just keep on increasing and everywhere more coffee shops are opening. There are no demographics when it comes to coffee as this blog states. Even low income areas in uk have more coffee shops opening.
No one seems to mind paying 3 bucks for a cup of coffee.
This confirms that we need our coffee and that means we need to be in a mind alternating state every single day and its on the up. No signs of slowing down or anyone giving up on their daily fix. Lets not mince our words here. Coffee is addictive and we all know this fact.
‘ Could coffee be a solution to help us not deal what’s really going on ? ‘ straight the point, with the impact it has on the central nervous system, physiology and psychological effects clearly this is so. Having once been a big drinker of coffee, I loved it even more than chocolate and thats saying something, I used it for energy, to give me and up feeling, to get things done and more, but in fact it just added to the problems causing greater exhaustion, highs and lows , shaking, sweats and panicky feelings, dehydration and excess acid in my body, crazy hey. Thank you Simple Living for these facts and questions which need to be out there for humanity to read, understand and make informed choices about drinking this poisonous drug with the ever growing demand and increase in it’s consumption. Is it time we took responsibility and started to look at what we don’t want to feel, the exhaustion, the hurts, rather than go for the coffee ?
I well recommend having a look at this video
http://greatist.com/live/parody-ad-shows-the-downsides-of-drinking-coffee?utm_source=email&utm_medium=forward&utm_campaign=parody-ad-shows-the-downsides-of-drinking-coffee
It basically says it as it is about coffee and how society views it. It uses parody and satire to expose the absurdity.
It calls the coffee bean a ‘legal psychoactive drug’.
If this were how we referred to coffee in our day to day lives, would our relationship with it be any different? Absolutely it would.
Thank You Shevon for giving us this link.
Great video – well worth watching and at least considering how on earth this drug got to be ‘legal’ in the first place.
The fact that coffee is the second largest traded commodity in our world we need to ask – how does a ‘psychoactive drug’ become such a huge trade at the cost of our human body?
As this blog clearly states caffeine alters our natural state and this means it harms us. But the law says its ok to take this drug and we are consuming it so much and with its addictive nature, coffee business is booming and there are more and more coffee products than ever before.
Hmmm, interesting subject, coffee. I’ve had lots of conversations about coffee recently and a number of people around me seem to be experimenting with giving up for various reasons – a few in particular because they don’t want to be ‘owned’ by it. I know what happens to my heart rate when I drink coffee – it sends me lala so I just don’t go there any more and perhaps because of how I observed the effects coffee had on me that this question you ask in this blog jumped out so loudly: ‘Why are there no news headlines about the side effects of coffee?’. Why indeed. When I was experimenting with giving up coffee I asked the guys at the local coffee geek place why was it that decaf made me go nearly as lala as the caffeine version. They had 2 answers: (1) decaf still has some caffeine in it so perhaps I was super sensitive, and (2) coffee has so many properties in it and that they haven’t all been tested and figured out yet so maybe it was some other chemical inside that was triggering my heart to beat too fast. Interesting again, no? That so many of us are drinking something every day that we don’t even know what’s in it or what it’s doing to us. I notice now, perhaps because I’m looking so much more closely, that coffee has a real effect on people. They actually change when they drink it: slightly hunched or tight shoulders, more jerky movements, more blinking and darting eyes, less eye contact, distracted. I wonder if others have noticed or will notice this too. So subtle but once you’ve noticed it you can’t un-notice it. And so why, with so much science available to us today, are we not looking into this? The pharmaceutical companies have to put side effects labels on their drugs and we’re seeing so much more food labelling now – maybe it’s time for coffee to carry clear information about side effects too? Then we wouldn’t be able to say we didn’t know (when we do really).
Great comment JS and thank you for sharing about the de-caff stuff.
To keep it simple caffeine is a drug that alters our natural state, so all the list you give about the person changing makes sense.
What is interesting is the coffee business is booming and on the increase. Surely this is a big fat sign that we need the stimulation that coffee gives us and not questioning why keeps the demand going and the suppliers giving us what we want.
Recently I have met people who never drank coffee but now say they need it to keep going the whole day with work and other demands that life brings. Most of them complain about the lack of sleep and have racy heads. Interesting and well worth digging deep into the WHY this is happening.
“What is interesting is the coffee business is booming and on the increase. Surely this is a big fat sign…”
What if we looked at all the commodities that are booming today and considered them as a reflection of us and our society. What would we see?
Coffee, wheat, sugar and cocoa would be up there.
Why are we so reliant on these things? What do they give us that we want them so much?
I was one of the stats to coffee drinkers and truely exhausted. I was working full time, weekends, public holidays, nights and working on calls, working out 6 days a week and thought I was fit but couldn’t get going unless I had my coffee fix.
I hadn’t heard of the wrist band for caffeine, but I’ve heard of a hangover clinic! What will they think of next to keep us functioning?
I don’t drink coffee or tea anymore and see so many people around me can’t start their day without it. Such reliance to mask the exhaustion people are experiencing more and more and keep us away from who we truely are.
A University has been fined £400,000 for giving students 100 times the dose of coffee in a test aimed at measuring the effects of caffeine on exercise.
Two students ended up in intensive care and needed dialysis.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/25/university-fined-400k-students-taking-part-caffeine-experiment/
Everyone that I know who drinks coffee has many cups a day. We seem to want more of it, like any drug.
Researchers have drawn a link between genes and our taste for coffee, suggesting that our desire for coffee and how much we need for that high, is dependent on our genes.
http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/health/caffeine-addiction-why-some-people-drink-more-coffee-than-others-2997040/
I don’t agree that this is the whole picture.
Recently during a conversation with a colleague I asked what would happen if he did not drink coffee as he said he felt very buzzy and this was at 8am.
His reply was that he was likely to open a bottle of whiskey. So this is telling us something about coffee and our need and desire for it , if we use this one example.
There must be something going on in our lives that wants the coffee drug and so will swap one for another if we cannot get it.
Could there actually be something more going on internally that we are trying to silence, by living off the buzz that coffee brings?
As this blog asks ‘Is it possible that coffee is stopping you being the real you and feeling what is really going on?’
If you thought the art of ‘creation’ was dead, think again.
Someone has created a ‘coffee spread’ making the ability to get our morning, daytime, evening, whenever, caffeine fix even easier.
http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/foodanddrink/espresso-spread-is-the-new-breakfast-trend-that-s-better-than-coffee-a3506571.html
The spread, being launched by Selfridges, contains dark roasted Arabica coffee beans, butter, sugar and cream and has 91 calories in a 20g serving.
I do believe it is time to, WAKE UP WORLD, and smell the coffee butter.
I mean what next:
Coffee flavour tobacco—oh yeah, they already have coffee flavoured vaping juice.
Coffee flavour sweets—oh yeah, they already have coffee flavoured chocolates.
Coffee flavour alcohol—oh yeah, they already have coffee flavoured liquers
Coffee flavour water—oh yeah, that’s just ‘coffee’.
There may be more coffee flavoured stuff out there but the point is:
WHY is coffee so popular?
WHY is coffee the second most traded commodity in the world?
WHY do we need our ‘fix’ of coffee when we have just woken up?
WHY are people coming up with different ways to get coffee into our bodies?
Added to the morning dose of caffeine on your bread or toast, we now have to contend with the heart attacking, artery-blocking dairy content.
And the likelihood is that, to go with our new spread on our bread or toast, we will have a cup of coffee with it!!
Just noticed this easter break how the high street was a bit dead but the coffee shops were booming with business as usual.
I often wonder how we have not yet clocked it with our so called intelligence that this drug which alters our natural state is legal when it should be illegal.
So because it is legal it gives us the licence, the permission to have it and most of us if we are honest need the fix and really can’t be bothered to read blogs like this that tell us the Truth about coffee.
The fact it is the second most traded commodity is a warning in itself. It is spelling out to us that we need coffee to live and this is the danger.
We need a drug to alter our natural state of being and no body is questioning WHY we need coffee in the first place.
What on earth is going on in our daily life that we need coffee to keep us stimulated?
Scientists are fighting to save us from a world without coffee!!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-28/the-scientists-fighting-to-save-us-from-a-world-without-coffee
Whilst the debate about whether climate change is a hoax or an imminent threat, the world coffee industry is taking action to protect its business.
Coffee crops are under siege from deforestation, abnormally high temperatures, a lack of precipitation and disease.
In Brazil, the situation is so dire that the country is considering importing lower quality Robusta beans from Vietnam in order to meet demand.
According to the World Coffee Research institute (WCR), land that is suitable to grow the Arabica beans will be cut in half worldwide by 2050.
The global market is heading for its fourth straight year of deficit in production and demand is expected to reach an all-time high this year.
Apart from climate change, a fungal disease, Leaf rust, is also devastating the industry. The WCR says about 18.2 bags of coffee worth about $2.5bn were lost to the disease from 2011-2016.
To cope, the industry is rushing to develop plants that can adapt with the changing climate and will be able to grow in colder climates.
A geneticist at the WCR is leading a GLOBAL, YES GLOBAL team of researchers in an effort to find existing plants that can survive in a changed climate.
What’s going on in the world when the last four years have shown a decrease in coffee production?
Why is it now, that the coffee bean is having a hard time trying to survive?
Is it possible that the world no longer needs coffee?
Is it possible that Mother Nature is saying we don’t need to stimulate our bodies anymore with caffeine?
The world’s scientists are putting a lot of effort, money, time and resources into making sure the world doesn’t go without its coffee by developing plants and crops that can be grown in colder, harsher climates.
With all the famine and starvation there is in the world, why isn’t the same amount of effort, money, time and resources being put into developing plants and crops for all types of climate that will be able to feed the world’s hungry?
What does it say about our priorities when a drug like caffeine is made more important than human life?
Is it possible that the coffee crops are diminishing for a reason?
Is it possible that, that ‘reason’ is so we start to question WHY we need this stimulant called caffeine?
A 16 year old just died in America from drinking too many caffeinated drinks, including coffee and an ‘energy’ drink.
His heart apparently ‘fell out of rhythm’.
The press coverage has been partly about parents’ responsibility to warn their kids about energy drinks and partly blaming the speed at which the drinks were consumed.
What I’m interested in is why is coffee are these other caffeine drinks on the market at all? What is it about how we are living that means there is such a demand for them?
And why did that boy choose to drink them in the first place? What was going on in his life that he was seeking such stimulation?
In the coffee shop this afternoon in hot sunny central London and the lovely guy offered me a free latte with a big smile.
I said no thank you and told him why whilst his manager was listening.
I did not hold back and those who know me would agree that is my style as there is no point walking away when an opportunity presents itself where more could be said, without preaching and teaching – just presenting the facts.
In this case, as the author of this blog, it is obvious I do not touch the stuff, so why they would I not say what coffee does and why I choose not to drink it?
What I observed was this man knew what I was saying and he agreed.
What did surprise him was the saying No as these days very few, if any would turn down a free coffee if it was offered.
This tells us how much we rely on coffee to give us that false buzz that we need to keep going, as without it we would crash fast.
Sounds a bit dramatic but there is enough evidence telling us now how highly addictive this stuff is and even blind freddy can see how busy busy all our coffee shop baristas are.
Coffee in the news again recently – “2.25billion cups of coffee are consumed worldwide every day” Yet again this is an inconclusive study whereby on the one hand it suggests coffee offers health benefits, but on the other hand it is inconclusive because other factors may have offered benefits and not the coffee. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jul/10/coffee-cuts-risk-of-dying-from-stroke-and-heart-disease-study-suggests
Coffee is the next drug that is being exposed. Very similar to nicotine. This article is an eye opener about treating caffeine as a drug.
http://theweek.com/articles/727713/coffee-cocaine
This article brings to light the concept that if you give up a substance or even a behavior, without dealing with the root cause of why you are doing it, you will just substitute something else to satisfy the need.
The Week – Issue 1118 – 1st April 2017
In the past year, three new coffee shops opened in Britain every day. (Retail Times)
The fact that we are desiring more and more coffee is certainly telling us something about the state of the human body and the unrest that the body is in. As this blog by Simple Living Global points out, coffee contains caffeine which is a stimulant of the nervous system.
How can we be at ease if our nervous system is being constantly stimulated?
Does this not mean that we are constantly on edge?
Would it not be worth asking why we need this stimulation?
There is something seriously wrong regarding our coffee consumption and the world is accepting this fact.
In the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), Caffeine Use Disorder is noted as a condition for further study.
There are countless articles across the internet stating that caffeine is the most used drug in the world.
We are feeding our kids this stuff so that they can stay awake, pass exams and have the energy to get up and keeping going regardless of the harm to the human body.
Are we really taking notice that caffeine is the most used drug in the world?
What will it take for humanity to take serious note of this or will we just keep demanding more.
Today I saw on the side of a coffee container a company stating that they help young people keep away from gangs by supporting them to work as coffee farmers.
The question arises –
Is this truly evolving?
Whilst it may seem like a good step for young people to move out of gangs, where illicit drugs are usually sold into coffee farming, have we in fact simply supported them to move from shifting illicit drugs to now cultivating and growing coffee which contains the world’s most popular drug – caffeine?
Is there any true difference because one drug is legal and another is illegal?
A lady sharing on the London tube about how she has given up coffee.
Everything she said was about how her body said no.
She got ‘the sweats’, she felt ‘panicky’, she couldn’t get to sleep, her mind wouldn’t stop, she found it hard to wake up in the morning.
‘It just didn’t make sense that I was drinking it’.
Quartz – 4 December 2017
https://qz.com/emails/quartz-obsession/1144744/
Reading about ‘cold brew’ coffee this is basically cold coffee, but it is produced by steeping the coffee grounds in cool water for 12 to 24 hours.
The logic goes that the flavour and aroma are inside the oils, acids and molecules of coffee (called ‘solubles’) and when you brew the coffee in cold water, you can get different flavours from the coffee, because those molecules don’t degrade. People talk about it having a ‘smooth’ taste that is not bitter.
Here are some statistics from the update:
“580%: Growth in cold brew sales from 2011-2016
$3.25: Average cost of a large cup of cold brew vs $2.65 for regular iced coffee
$0.62: Worth of ground coffee in each cup of cold brew, compared with $0.35 in hot coffee
105 billion: Cups of coffee consumed in the United States annually
$38.1 million: Ready-to-drink cold brew sales this year, with an expectation for cold brew businesses to quadruple by 2021.”
There are a plethora of new gadgets going on sale so we can re-create the cold brew process at home. In the run up to Christmas, I wonder how many of those will be sold.
So I’m thinking a few things:
1. Cold coffee sounds disgusting.
2. If coffee tastes bitter to us, isn’t that a message to our bodies not to drink it? Why don’t we listen to that message, instead of spending an entire day processing the coffee in a such a way so as to remove that message?
3. We seem to love over-engineering things and going to town on the tastes of this life.
4. Why do we get sold so quickly and so completely on the latest ‘in’ thing?
5. We clearly have a whole heap of natural alchemic tendencies – why aren’t we applying those night and day to our wellbeing?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-you-addicted-to-coffee-1509381012
The Wall Street Journal – 30 October 2017
CAFFEINE USE DISORDER has been added to the most recent edition of “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” as a condition for further study.
CAFFEINE IS THE MOST USED DRUG IN THE WORLD.
We all know that a drug is a substance that alters our natural state and is it any surprise why coffee shops are booming business anywhere we go.
They are a licence for a legal drug and how many more research studies are we going to wait for to tell us what we all already know.
The fact that caffeine is in the DSM manual is a big deal and a clear confirmation that we need to see it for what it truly is and read blogs like this to raise our awareness.
As a coffee drinker of the past, I used to noticed piercing pains in certain parts of my head when I drank coffee. I needed them to be milky, frothy where possible and full of sugar. Add to that a cake or croissant and whilst eating and drinking, I would be thinking when I could do it all again.
Would it be true to say that many of us are not aware we are hooked on caffeine?
Would it be true to say that many of us are not seeing coffee as an addictive drug?
Would it be true to say that many of us like a short term fix, a solution to function in daily life?
Would it be true to say that coffee, like tea is just a way of life and we are not interested to learn more, as it might mean making changes?
Would it be true to say that we continue upping our coffee consumption but never stop to ask why on earth this might be happening?
WHY do we need more of the same to keep us going morning, noon and night?
Are these questions worth considering by starting with a dose of honesty?
Why do they serve coffee on plane when it is known to dehydrate?
A recent flight was a reminder of how much focus we put on coffee. The big jugs and the coffee call come around after food and there is glee as people lift up their cups.
It comes around again to wake you up before you get off.
It is interesting to see our behaviours en mass like that. Much is exposed.
In a card shop, I saw a fridge magnet that said ‘drink coffee, do stupid things faster’.
Someone felt this was insightful enough to design and produce and people are buying it.
We know very well the effect of coffee on our behaviour.
An article from CNN 1st February 2018, talks about how “Coffee may come with a cancer warning in California.”
California coffee shops may soon be forced to warn customers about a possible cancer risk linked to their morning jolt of java.
Proposition 65 is a list of chemicals it considers possible causes of cancer, and one of them, acrylamide, is created when coffee beans are roasted.
This list is from the ‘State of California Environmental Protection Agency Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act 1986 – Chemicals Known to the State to Cause Cancer or reproductive Toxicity – December 29th 2017.
(Proposition 65 is a list of 22 pages with approximately 35-40 chemicals, that are known carcinogens, on each page)
A lawsuit first filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court in 2010 by the nonprofit Council for Education and Research in Toxics, targets several companies that make or sell coffee.
The attorney representing the nonprofit Council said it wants the coffee companies to reduce the amount of the chemicals to the point where there would be no significant cancer risk. He said: “I’m addicted to coffee, I confess, and would like to be able to have mine without acrylamide.”
At least 13 of the defendants have settled and agreed to display warnings.
The National Coffee Association disagrees with this report and the CEO said in a statement: “Coffee has been shown over and over again to be a healthy beverage. The US Government’s own Dietary Guidelines state that coffee can be part of a healthy lifestyle. This lawsuit confuses consumers and has the potential to make a mockery of Proposition 65 cancer warning at a time when the public needs clear and accurate information about health.”
The National Toxicology Program report on Carcinogens, considers acrylamide to be “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.”
California added acrylamide to its carcinogen list in January 1990 and the State has successfully taken companies to court over it.
In addition to coffee, acrylamide can be found in potatoes and baked goods like crackers, bread and cookies, breakfast cereal, canned black olives and prune juice. It’s in some food packaging and is a compound of tobacco smoke.
In 2000, the California attorney general settled lawsuits when companies agreed to reduce the level of acrylamide found in potato chips and French fries.
In 2007, fast food restaurants in California posted acrylamide warnings about fries and paid court penalties and costs for not putting the warnings in prior years.
The nonprofit attorney said: “We have a huge cancer epidemic in this country and about a third of cancers are linked to diet. To the extent we can get carcinogens out of the food supply, logically we can reduce the cancer burden in this country. That’s what this is all about.”
Big companies have agreed to settle in court and put signs out stating that coffee may contain a carcinogen.
Is it possible that there is truth to this report, otherwise why would these big companies acquiesce to this?
The attorney for the nonprofit Council confesses that he is addicted to coffee.
On the National Coffee Association’s website, there is a video about this report and at the end of the video a customer in a coffee shop states that if he saw a cancer warning about coffee, it wouldn’t stop him buying because “I need my coffee in the morning.”
Putting acrylamide to one side, we don’t really need to go to the cancer element to see how harmful coffee is.
Caffeine is a major pharmacologically active compound in coffee and it is a mild central nervous system stimulant.
Caffeine is a drug and as such has the potential for addictive behaviours.
According to the US Food and Drug Administration, about 80% of adults drink coffee each day and about 38% say, we “need” our coffee to get through the workday.
In my experience, at my workplace and with the proliferation of coffee shops springing up, I would say that the figure of 38% is a woefully underestimation of the true amount of people that “need” their first thing in the morning, their lunchtime, their afternoon and their evening fix of caffeine.
Of course, the possibility that roasting coffee beans may produce acrylamide, a possible carcinogen, is a serious issue.
But is it possible that an issue just as important or maybe even more so, is the dependency we have on caffeine?
The National Coffee Association puts a lot of stock in the fact that the US Government’s own guidelines say that coffee can be part of a healthy lifestyle.
Is it possible that, if something has the potential to get you addicted, it can in no way be considered “part of a healthy lifestyle”?
I was talking to a colleague this week about his coffee consumption and how he manages it.
He said he had got up to 8 or 9 cups a day at one point and it was ‘getting out of control’.
Now he regulates himself at 1 or 2 cups.
It was clear listening to him and reflecting on similar conversations with others, that we know exactly how coffee affects our bodies.
He shared what it was like ‘coming off’ the coffee – the headaches, the difficulty concentrating, the body suffering. But he knew he needed to go through that.
He currently feels the 1 or 2 cups is okay for his body, but he is watching this closely.
Having gone through this myself, there was a point at which my body told me ‘no more’, not even 1 sip. However much I liked the ritual and taste of it.
I watched the impact of coffee today at a meeting.
The person I was meeting with went through a series of physical changes over the course of an hour.
At first they were open and calm and relaxed.
As they drank their coffee the flow of their conversation became interrupted and they had to search for their words more.
They started to forget names and other information.
Then their movements became more jerky and their eyes more stare-y. Their mouth became dry, they talked faster and started interrupting.
They ended up in a fully agitated state.
It was crazy to watch the changes happen in front of me so clearly.
It was clear from that 1 hour that coffee is not only a mind altering drug, but a body/physiology altering drug too.
And this is no doubt why we like it.
Well on this ‘watching the impact of coffee’ as you say in your comment JS, I was ‘watching the impact of coffee’ in a coffee shop, call it cafe where it is non stop busy traffic.
A man asked me if he could adjust the spare seat on my table so he had more room.
I thought at first it was strange as he looked like billy no mates.
Heard him order 3 strong some italian name for coffee, so I looked up when the waitress served him. Yep – all for him. Interesting observation.
What is this telling us about coffee consumption and WHY people need so much of the stuff?
There is no need to say more about what I saw, as you have covered it with precision in your comment above JS.
Next – got talking to a couple with muffins and cups of the strong black coffee.
She looked so exhausted and asked me specific questions about stress and sleep.
Her response was she just loved the taste of bitter black coffee and nothing more.
He said he was very healthy, eats healthy and goes to the gym for over a decade and that sugar is good for us and so is coffee.
Reading this blog and the forensic one about caffeine on this website, the reader would be left in no doubt that coffee is a drug and it alters our natural state.
https://simplelivingglobal.com/the-real-truth-about-caffeine/
Just the anecdotal evidence from observation in JS’s comment and what I saw tells me beyond any doubt that both coffee and sugar have an affect on us.
What society has not yet realised is the true meaning of being ‘healthy’.
We have a long way to go before we unite on the true meaning of health and then live that quality.
It would be wise for the reader to ponder on the rise in illness and disease globally and why our health systems are at the stage of going bankrupt.
AND why coffee sales just keep on rising.
A colleague couldn’t find a mug today so drank coffee out of a glass. In our meeting he realised how disgusting it looked and went out to pour it away and get some water.
He announced later he can’t believe he has been drinking it and that glass showed him the truth.
He says he now wants *clear* water all the way.
Talking to a university worker this week. She told me some of the students don’t realise coffee has ill effects.
One student thought it was perfectly normal to drink 20 cups a day and had not considered that consumption was contributing to a state of heightened anxiousness and sleep problems.
She said she has to explain what coffee is and suggest the students regulate their intake. They have not otherwise considered this.
It is intersting to me that drinking coffee is seen as no big deal by so many. Everyone does it and there are coffee shops everywhere so it is seen as normal, and not questioned.
To such a degree that this university worker is seeing young people drink it like water and suffer accordingly.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/broccoli-coffee-powder-trend-how-nutritious-healthy-eating-benefits-a8387241.html
Independent – 7 June 2018
This news story starts with “For some, the standard frothy cappuccino will never suffice as an adequate caffeinated drink of choice.”
Next – did we know there is a “hipster” target market and that means a coffee must be served in some unconventional manner, such as in an avocado or a carrot.
Brocolli Coffee is now available as the latest coffee trend. The broccoli is in powder form and could be beneficial for the health of consumers and profitable for producers.
Research is showing the average Australian is still not eating the recommended daily intake of vegetables a day and broccoli powder as an option “will help address this”.
2011 – a study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry assessed whether vegetables that had been transformed into supplements could be as beneficial as they are in their original state.
The researchers came to the conclusion that the body absorbs far fewer of the nutrients found in broccoli when consumed in its supplement form.
So is this a great way for us to increase our daily vegetable intake or do we need to ask some serious questions –
Can we find out WHY a country is not choosing to eat the daily recommended intake of vegetables?
What are the lifestyle choices we have subscribed to that wants coffee everyday?
How are we living everyday that makes us not want natural foods like vegetables?
Are we considering at any point what the caffeine in coffee is doing to our mind and body?
Have we all read the forensic blog on this website about caffeine?
https://simplelivingglobal.com/the-real-truth-about-caffeine/
It would be true to say we have become a world that is amazing at coming up with the next creation and we have never run out of these creations, but is it the TRUTH?
In other words, are we missing something valuable that needs to be addressed?
Do we need to find out if the caffeine in the coffee that is addictive, stops us wanting the good stuff and our body suffers as a consequence?
Do we honestly feel that we can continue “business as usual” and keep doing what we want and trying out the latest fad in the hope it will “do the job” OR is it time to dig a bit deeper and look at how we are living and what is really going on for us?
What we can all start with is SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT.
I keep seeing coffee shops connected with bike shops.
Just walked past one, it’s the third I’ve seen in 2 weeks.
Why the connection between coffee and cycling?
They both make us go faster. Speed up our physiology and many people like that.
Perhaps it makes sense we are seeing them more closely and obviously connected.
I saw someone today wearing a t-shirt that said ‘Coffee is My Blood’.
Do we know what we are actually saying when we brandish statements like this?
Our blood is the river system of the human body, carrying vital nutrients from one end to the next. Delivering oxygen and fighting infection, our blood is needed to keep the human body alive.
And then we have coffee – a poisonous substance that stimulates us away from our natural state of being, where even a Court Judge in California recently stated that coffee cups should have a warning sign.
If we had coffee running as our blood we would be dead. FACT.
So why would we want this?
We may think that these are just words, but words are very powerful as they are not just words.
What if words come with belief systems that align us to things that are not true and just the mere acceptance of something as being true when it is not is poisonous to our human body?
What if the truth is if any of us are to make this statement it is because we NEED coffee and so would it be more honest to say that we need coffee and start to question WHY we need it, rather than affirm that ‘Coffee is My Blood’?
Daily Mail – 11 August 2018
95 million cups of coffee consumed a day in Britain.
It is now more popular than ever.
Scientists have discovered how 2 coffees a day could harm our sleep years later.
Findings explain why some older people struggle to drop off.
Those who drank 2 cups a day for 30 years had smaller pineal glands.
The pineal gland is responsible for producing the hormone melatonin which is needed for our sleep wake natural cycle.
It is obvious that less melatonin would be produced if the gland responsible is a smaller size.
Caffeine is well known as a short term stimulant and this is thought to be one of the first studies to suggest it could have long-term effects on the brain.
In their report, published in the journal Sleep, the scientists warned –
‘Given the large amount of coffee consumption across the world and the rapid increase in the use of caffeine in children and adolescents over the past 30 years, we should be concerned with the potential adverse effects of lifetime coffee consumption’.
Of course there will always be those who do not agree and then it goes back for another research study and another and another and it will continue, as it has done in this way for a long long time.
If we just stop and read this blog in full and then the Caffeine blog on this website – what insights could we gain?
What obvious clear markers are there flagging the reading to pay attention and take note?
https://simplelivingglobal.com/the-real-truth-about-caffeine/
We do have the Stats | Facts | Truth | Wisdom informing us and guiding us that there is another way to live where our body is not stimulated.
In other words, a natural way that does not need artificial substances to alter our natural state.
Coffee is a stimulant – a drug with many side effects.
Imagine teaching this to everyone and re-categorising it as a drug instead of a relaxing hot drink.
For those who would challenge this, some questions to ponder on –
WHY are coffee sales consistently rising?
WHY is it such a highly traded commodity?
WHY is there a need to want more coffee?
WHY are there withdrawal symptoms?
WHY have we not got real independent studies spelling out the harm of what caffeine does to us?
WHY are those who champion it all drinking coffee?
WHY are the policy makers in our world drinking coffee?
WHY are those in positions of power drinking coffee everyday?
WHY do so many call coffee the most legal drug in the world?
The Guardian – 1 September 2018
The world is increasingly hooked on caffeine.
Globally the coffee shop trade has become a multi-billion-dollar phenomenon, which is the coffee culture.
Over the last 20 years, coffee has changed from a commodity into a lifestyle product, as consumers in western markets woke up to its appeal because of branded chains.
They have opened stores overseas and subsequently coffee culture has moved to Asia and other developing markets, which explains the huge overall sales potential.
Mintel research estimates that the global coffee shops market was worth $165 billion in 2017 and another $56 billion worth was sold in shops.
The explosion of interest in coffee outlets is so big that for the next five years, one large well known retailer plans to build a new coffee shop every 15 hours in China.
As consumers adapt more to western-style, “white-collar” urban lifestyles, consumers are increasingly reaching for coffee.
So what is this telling us?
Coffee is big business, as this blog presents and we now know that the industry is growing.
They now have people in countries who were not aware of this legal drug, who want to jump on the bandwagon and be like others in the western world.
Would it be wise for real education in Asian countries like China, to inform everyone of the mind altering effects of coffee, which contains the drug caffeine?
Once they have all the facts and the statistics, then they have the choice.
If we do not start with real basic education about every drug, be it legal or not, our world continues to rely on these stimulants and goes against the natural state our body wants.
It is simple maths and no rocket science qualification needed.
We need this drug called caffeine to pep us up and keep us going and all the while ignore what is underneath this need and desire.
There will come a point where humanity will have to wake up and smell the coffee – pun intended.
We have a 911 with a beverage that is booming in business and yet very few realise it is supporting us to not deal with our exhaustion.
We are whacked out with our lifestyle choices, which include poor sleep and other stimulants like alcohol.
https://simplelivingglobal.com/world-sleep-day/
https://simplelivingglobal.com/the-real-truth-about-alcohol/
While we keep caffeine “legal” we need to question why it has become such a popular choice for so many and the craving for wanting more of it in anything and everything.
Is there a clue here for us to consider ?
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/coffee-shops-fuelling-obesity-muffins-costa-pret-starbucks-a8541251.html
Coffee shops have come under fire for encouraging customers to add sweet treats to their drink orders and health officials warn that this is fuelling the country’s obesity crisis.
Public Health England have called on coffee chains and restaurants to reduce the levels of sugar in their products by 20% by 2020.
So has anyone noticed that things seem to be getting worse?
We are needing more and more sugar in our diets and the suppliers are there on tap with the next thing to keep up with our demands.
WHY are we blaming the shops, when we are the ones asking for it in the first place?
If everyone was in a coffee shop and asking for peppermint tea, like I do, they would soon wake up and smell the coffee, pun intended and change, in order to meet the new type of demand.
We are the ones who are responsible and yet we have a world that loves to blame and find solutions for absolutely everything.
On a recent visit to the US, I went into a jumbo coffee chain and asked for mint tea and they asked me to repeat it 3 times and then said ‘no we don’t sell that stuff here because no one would buy it’.
The counter was full of all types of cakes, cookies and other snacks and the list on the wall was drinks I had never heard of including ‘cold foam iced brew’, whatever that is.
I noticed that most had straws in their drinks and the place smelt like a sugar factory.
The cup sizes were jumbo and the people I clocked walking in and out were not able to walk without waddling from side to side, due to excess weight.
I also observed how busy the staff were with drive thru orders – it was big vehicles, big people and big coffee cups, with take out extras in a box and this was morning.
This is one snapshot of another country who have obesity as a 911 crisis.
England is not far behind and the 2020 deadline is not going to get us on the front foot if we are to be honest.
Would it be wise to consider – is there another way?
Do we need to educate our kids and ourselves as adults, about the harm of coffee and sugar and then make sensible lifestyle choices, so we can knock out all these man made dis-eases that come simply from how we are living and the choices we are making?
Would this end the blame game and would it put an end to our band aid solutions, that history has confirmed cannot and will not ever work?
Solutions will never get us on the front foot, but being real and honest about what is truly going on for us would be a start.
As an ex- lover of coffee shops, because I could indulge in the sweet cakes and biscuits, I know that it was understanding what they were doing to my body and listening to real role models who were free of any coffee and sugar in their diet, that inspired me to give it a go – small steps at a time.
After a decade of no coffee shop sugar treats, I do not miss them and they are simply not on my radar and never will be. This is why I have the vitality levels that I do, because I am not using the coffee and sugar to bury all my issues further into my body. They are out and gone forever.
Seeing today how we normalise adult behaviour in children.
This morning, I saw a lady telling her friend about how she and her 3 year old both have their cup of coffee together in the morning.
She has her cup of strong coffee and her daughter has her ‘special cup’, with a more milky version.
She was involving her daughter in this conversation, encouraging her to be proud of this ritual.
This amazed me to see, as I had thought adults considered it very much not the ‘done thing’ to give coffee to children or to encourage them to drink it. Particularly when we know the impact it has on the physiology and how sensitive children’s bodies are.
It seems we are further moving away from these unwritten rules.
As with all things, the consequences will follow.
In a meeting this week, where a cup of coffee had been left languishing on the table for some time.
My colleague expressed disgust at the brown, congealed liquid sitting there.
The milk had coagulated on the surface and it looked like something you would find in a sewer.
He mused about that being what happens inside the body when you drink milky coffee.
He said maybe it didn’t seem so appetising or even worth the caffeine kick when you could see what is really going on.
Daily Mail – 29 September 2018
Mandy Francis reporting in the Daily Mail on coffee pods writes that Britons spent more than £190 million on them over the past two years which equates to around 760 million pods being used and discarded in just 12 months.
The article goes on to talk about different coffee pods that can be recycled as a major problem has been that most have been made from a combination of plastic and metal and can rarely be recycled.
It is interesting to note that we seem determined to be able to get our shot of caffeine in any way that we can and that so much time and energy is spent on creating different ways that we can drink coffee.
Does the fact that coffee pods are now biodegradable mean that they are good for our health?
By finding new ways to drink our daily cup, does it mean that we no longer have to look at why we are needing to drink coffee?
Does finding new ways to take this legal drug absolve us of the responsibility of taking care of our true health and well-being?
This forensic blog on caffeine tells us all that we need to know about what this key ingredient in coffee does to our body.
https://simplelivingglobal.com/the-real-truth-about-caffeine/
In a well known coffee shop in the City this morning.
The queue of people waiting for their take out coffee was crazy long. At least 20 people. Everyone on their way to the office. More people pressing in.
It makes me question how jacked up we all are – the entire City fuelled by caffeine.
I have a habit of researching every evening and there seems to be more and more coffee related news.
Brocolli coffee and coffee with cannabis – what next we would say.
Something I have noticed is people I know who never drank coffee are not just doing daily shots and have told me they are needing more to keep going and complete their day.
We as a world have yet to educate everyone about the harm-full effects of this legalised drug.
I have often wondered why sales are booming and there are lots of coffee shops in one high street where all seem to be doing well.
Reading the blog and the caffeine one on this website, we can be left in no doubt it is a drug – a substance that alters our natural state.
https://simplelivingglobal.com/the-real-truth-about-caffeine/
Interesting how we have come to make this drug normal so it is legal to consume it and it just so happens that it is super popular amongst all age groups.
Do we need to ask WHY and do we need to ask WHY people suffer withdrawal symptoms, as if they were taking a drug when they try to come off coffee?
The answers are under our nose and we all know coffee affects us and it is not good but unless we ask questions, we will continue to make this one of the largest traded commodities in our world.
Let us not forget the suppliers can only give us what the demand is and it is us – the individual who is making the demand. This throws the blame game out.
The Times – 22nd June 2019
Coffee Algorithm Tells the Caffeine Shot to Take.
Fatigued civilians are being helped by an algorithm, which the US army uses, that tells us exactly how much coffee to drink to maintain peak performance.
The ‘caffeine optimisation tool’ has been designed to “maximise alertness while avoiding excessive caffeine consumption”.
Tests have suggested that the system easily outperforms the US army’s guidelines on caffeine use.
The tool, available to use online, allows a user to specify their desirable peak alertness periods, their sleeping schedule, the maximum level of alertness they want to maintain and the maximum daily caffeine intake.
For decades the US military has plied servicemen with amphetamines, steroids and painkillers in the name of improving performance. More recently it has turned to stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall in the hope of bolstering cognitive stamina and memory.
But few substances have proved as useful in combating exhaustion and boredom as caffeine. The US army prizes its ability to improve “risk-related judgment and impulsiveness” during prolonged sleep deprivation. The ready meals provided to troops in battle have contained caffeine-fortified snacks, such as beef jerky and apple sauce.
The US army has been working on the algorithm for several years. Its researchers had suggested that the algorithm could be embedded in a smartphone app, that could be used by people who must deal with irregular hours.
What is going on here?
Is it any wonder these soldiers are so exhausted after being routinely given drugs like Ritalin and Adderall?
Ritalin is a central nervous system stimulant. It affects chemicals in the brain and nerves that contribute to hyperactivity and impulse control. Ritalin is used to treat attention deficit disorder (ADD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy – an uncommon disorder that causes periods of extreme daytime sleepiness and sudden brief episodes of deep sleep during the day.
Adderall is a medication that treats ADHD and narcolepsy.
Is it possible that we need to look at why soldiers are exhausted in the first place?
Now this tool is going to help civilians.
First and foremost caffeine is a drug. It is defined as a drug because it stimulates the central nervous system causing increased alertness.
https://simplelivingglobal.com/the-real-truth-about-caffeine/
Like all drugs, over time, the efficacy is reduced and the user requires more of the stimulant to get the same results. This could then lead to addiction.
Instead of creating apps that tell us the optimum dosage of a drug that only serves to stimulate us, is it possible we need to be looking at what is creating this exhaustion in the first place?
Is it possible that this tool’s only success is making a stimulant more productive, which may encourage more people to consume caffeine?
Is it possible that, if we need a stimulant in the first place, then that is telling us that something is not right?
The Conversation – 7th August 2019
Why Your Reusable Coffee Cup May Be No Better Than a Disposable
http://theconversation.com/why-your-reusable-coffee-cup-may-be-no-better-than-a-disposable-120949?utm_
Is there any item more symbolic of our modern, disposable culture than the single-use coffee cup?
In March 2016, they were vilified in a celebrity chef’s campaign when he drove a bus through London covered in 10,000 coffee cups: the number the UK allegedly uses every two minutes.
Thanks to a thin plastic lining that makes them waterproof, most paper recycling mills can’t efficiently process these coffee cups, and the majority are incinerated or sent to landfill. Even worse they are typically made using virgin free fibre rather than recycled paper, due to hygiene and food-contact requirements.
Although the chef’s campaign got many people outraged, our drinking habits haven’t slowed since.
The number of coffee shops in the UK is projected to grow from 20,000 to 30,000 by 2025.
According to the ‘waste hierarchy’ – prevention, preparing for re-use, recycling, other recovery, disposal – preventing waste should be the first priority. Reusable cups have surged in popularity and most major coffee shops offer a discount for customers that bring their own.
Nevertheless, reusable cups typically make less than 5% of sales. The unavoidable truth is that it simply isn’t convenient for people on the run to remember their cup, carry it around and wash it between uses.
What’s more, it can take up to 100 uses for a reusable cup to offset its higher greenhouse gas emissions compared to a disposable.
It seems the disposable coffee cup is here to stay for the foreseeable future, but even before the chef’s campaign, major stakeholders across the coffee cup value chain from paper cup manufacturers to coffee chains to waste processors had come together to form the Paper Cup Recovery and Recycling Group (PCRRG). They realised that the virgin paper fibres used in each cup could be a valuable resource, if only the plastic lining could be removed.
The technology already exists to allow this with the paper fibres being used again and the plastic lining recycled into garden furniture or building materials. Currently, there are three such plants in the UK that accept coffee cups and combined, these have the capacity to recycle more than 4.5 billion cups each year – well above the estimated 2.5 billion the UK consumes each year.
But even recycling isn’t perfect – it consumes a lot of energy, generates greenhouse gas emissions through transporting the cups to the correct facility and can be inefficient due to contamination from incorrect disposal. The search is on for an even more sustainable solution with one company launching a coffee cup made of an edible wafer biscuit.
There seems to be a few initiatives around from the coffee chains, the manufacturers and the waste processors that could have an impact on the issue of what to do with the billions of used coffee cups.
But the one thing that stood out for me was the fact that, although the celebrity chef’s campaign “got many people outraged”, it hasn’t slowed the consumption down.
We are the ones that are creating this issue.
Is it possible that like many things in our lives, we are not happy with the situation but yet we are not prepared to do anything about it?
2.5 billion cups of coffee a year, and that is just the disposable cups.
What about the people that bring in their own cups?
What about the people that sit in the coffee shop?
What about the people that buy coffee from the supermarket or specialist shops?
That is a lot of coffee we drink so it is no surprise that the amount of coffee shops will see a 50% increase by 2025 which will, of course, increase the number of used coffee cups.
Is it possible that we need to start to look at this coffee consumption?
Coffee is a stimulant. Coffee is addictive.
Is it possible that we actually need the coffee to get ourselves out of bed or to get moving in the morning?
Coffee contains caffeine.
Caffeine is a psychoactive drug. A psychoactive drug is a chemical substance that changes brain function.
Is it no wonder that coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world?
Is it possible we need to start asking WHY we drink so much coffee?
A recent article published by a reputable school of public health who are associated with a very famous university, states that straight Coffee can be beneficial as part of a healthy diet.
Firstly, how many of us can consume coffee straight – 4 cups a day without cream and sugar?
The question we ALL need to asking first and foremost is – who is funding these research studies?
Next – we as the general public, need to find out if ANY of those carrying out this study actually drink coffee as part of their daily lifestyle choice beverage?
What was also noted in this article was that caffeine can block brain receptors associated with pain.
So let’s take a stop moment here and before we go any further, the reader is asked to go straight to our blog on this website called The Real Truth about Caffeine.
https://simplelivingglobal.com/the-real-truth-about-caffeine/
Then we need to consider the following very basic question –
If a drug (in this case the name is caffeine) can block brain receptors – what is this telling us?
Can we join the dots and admit this means that a drug is altering our natural state?
WHY do we endorse and champion a drug that can block pain, but never once ask WHY and HOW we got the pain in the first place?
In other words get to the root cause of where this pain originated from before we go finding solutions to numb it, block it or suppress it.
Back to the study – are we likely to pay attention when it is a very reputable public health school telling us that it is ok to have our coffee?
Are we seeking this kind of endorsement that gives us permission to continue drinking this drug because it remains legal and now we have famous health schools telling us so?
Are we going to ignore the advice about having coffee without cream or sugar, as the headlines say it is part of a healthy diet?
And finally – how far away are we from the word HEALTHY if we are to be honest right now?
We as a world cannot and will not ever unite and come to a one unified truth about any word until we all agree and right now the words coffee and caffeine for many members of the public and some researchers are not congruent with the word “healthy”.
Our definition of the word Healthy is so varied that what we think is healthy may actually be harmfull to the human frame.
When a national newspaper has a whole page in the Body + Soul section, many of us may take note as it talks about tips to lose the recent weight gain because most of us are at home.
Great news – we are told to eat half a plate full of vegetables at meal times, but in reality who is doing that and if we are, how consistent are we with the other snacks or beverages, like alcohol which we all know contains plenty of calories?
The advice is to drink 2 – 3 cups of black coffee.
Question 1 – if you like the milky frothy comforty creamy version, how can you possibly go for the straight bitter black coffee?
With a dose of honesty, is this really going to happen – white to black with no sugar or extras that we tend to go for with the comfy white milk option?
Next
Question 2 – is this good medicine for us?
Before you answer – read our blog The Real Truth about Caffeine on this website and re-read this blog about coffee and ALL the comments thereafter.
https://simplelivingglobal.com/the-real-truth-about-caffeine/
For simplicity – coffee contains caffeine, which is a drug that alters the state of our mind. Our nervous system is stimulated, so we are not in a natural state of being.
Hello – please re-read the above sentence again to ensure awareness of this fact.
Back to this newspaper giving tips.
We are being told that women who drink 3 cups of black coffee have lower body and abdominal fat, so should we jump on the bandwagon?
Would it be wise and sensible to consider everything?
In other words look at the whole and not just a part?
This means that black coffee could help you have less belly fat but at what cost to the human frame?
What if the coffee is having a drug like effect and acts like an appetite suppressant because we become stimulated and that nervous tension makes us crave and eat less, so of course there will be less fat on our body?
Are we taking a reductionist stance when we read something that says there is proof that drinking black coffee works but without seeing the whole, which could be harmfull and not a quick fix solution if we weigh it all up?
And finally – ask anyone who has stopped drinking coffee and find out WHY first and then what the benefits were.
It is only when we have real life anecdotal evidence as it is called, will we turn the tides because it holds a quality, a vibration of someone who has lived what they are sharing. This may be the future game changer – those who live it and then share it. Bit like the content on this whole website.
We ought to be asking more questions when we have media reporting that may not be the actual truth and just because the writer is a medical professional does not necessarily mean we must follow their advice, in this case endorsing coffee.
When coal mining ceased in parts of England and Wales from the 1970s, entire communities were devastated. This led to an epidemic of mental health problems that continue to this day.
One badly hit community has started selling coffee to revive and whilst many would say this is a happy story – are any of us prepared to look at what is being sold and is this really in truth helping the town and others if the product is a legal substance that alters our natural state? There is no getting away from the simple fact that coffee, because of its caffeine content stimulates our nervous system and gives us a false sense of being.
One thing is for sure – because of the addictive nature of coffee, this community business will thrive.
How has it got to the point that we have a legal drug called coffee?
WHY do we not seem to ask how come it is the second largest traded commodity in the world?
If we are in doubt, it would be a very wise move to re-read this short blog and then ALL the comments thereafter and then go to our forensic blog on this website called The Real Truth about Caffeine.
https://simplelivingglobal.com/the-real-truth-about-caffeine/
The thing we all know is that coffee consumption is not going to be seeing a downward trend, as more and more people love their coffee and rely on it to function in daily life.
Have we thought about what it would really be like if coffee no longer was on our radar?
WHY is there so much talk about withdrawal symptoms if it was just a natural beverage?
The Guardian – 19 September 2020
We can now have a goblet of coffee and it costs £50. It is the UK’s most expensive filter brew.
You have to secure it with a deposit if you want one. You wait 45 minutes and get ‘theatre and caffeine”. It’s a whole experience that goes with it from whiffing the smell before it is weighed in front of you and then grinded and apparently it claims to be like a floral tea.
The precision of the water is to be heated at 94 degrees so that the CO2 bubbles to the surface.
We can fly to Paris and back for the same price but for some, it may be the thought of having a coffee bean that is special.
This comment could go on the blog “Have we Lost the Plot” but before we go making our judgements and opinions about the whole thing here, let us have a reminder that there would be no suppliers if there was no demand. That simply means that there are people who want this and demand this and so it is delivered.
Of course there is always the profits here to consider. The vast mark up means the producer back in Ethiopia gets a share under £5 per cup and the suppliers get the rest which is just over £45.
What is possible now is others could jump on the bandwagon and we could see more of this special coffee coming out of gold vases or another form that we may create, as we as humans seem to like creating more and more new things, simply ‘Because We Can’.
https://simplelivingglobal.com/because-we-can/
American Heart Association – 21 December 2022
https://newsroom.heart.org/news/drinking-2-or-more-cups-of-coffee-daily-may-double-risk-of-heart-death-in-people-with-severe-hypertension
Drinking two or more cups of coffee a day was associated with twice the risk of death from cardiovascular disease among people with severe hypertension compared to non-coffee drinkers, according to a new study of more than 18,600 men and women in Japan.
During 19 years of follow-up, cardiovascular related deaths were documented. The analysis of data for all participants found that drinking two or more cups of coffee a day was associated with twice the risk of cardiovascular disease death in people whose blood pressure was 160/100 mm Hg or higher compared to those who did not drink any coffee.
The study’s senior author Hiroyasu Iso, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., director of the Institute for Global Health Policy Research, Bureau pf International Health Cooperation, National Center for Global Health and Medicine in Tokyo, Japan, and professor emeritus at Osaka University said: “These findings may support the assertion that people with severe high blood pressure should avoid drinking excessive coffee. This is because people with severe hypertension are more susceptible to the effects of caffeine, caffeine’s harmful effects may outweigh its protective effects and may increase the risk of death.“
Note – this study also mentions green tea and drinking only one cup of coffee a day as not harmful.
It would be a wise move for the reader to go to our article called ‘The Real Truth about CAFFEINE’ and read the presentation and then make choices going forward.
https://simplelivingglobal.com/the-real-truth-about-caffeine/
What we as a world have not yet come to is that any caffeine ingested into the physical body alters its natural state and this is something that we cannot negate, refute ignore or deny any longer.
This website has delivered the facts and the stats on mind altering drugs. One thing that we conveniently forget is that caffeine as our number one legal drug has been around for centuries and will continue to do so until we wake up (pun intended) and realise that it is not of any benefit to human health.