Dec01
The case for drinking as much as you like.
I’ve been thinking about starting to drink it for health reasons, but “as much as I like” is currently none at all — I’ve just never developed a taste for it, and I’ve never envied people who seem (or claim to be) unable to function in the morning without it. I don’t want to get dependent on it in that way. From the article, the most obvious benefit is to reduce triglycerides, but mine are already very low from my paleo diet.
It wouldn’t be hard for me to take it up, because I make a pot for Patricia every morning. I’d just have to make more.
So I still don’t know what to do about it.
If you sprinkle vanilla extract or essence of peppermint into each cup it cuts down the harshness. I always end up drinking my black Starbuck’s Bold French Roast down to the last drop that way.
Well, if you drank better coffee than Starbucks, you might not have to do that.
I don’t really have a problem with the taste, and on the rare occasion that I drink it, I drink it black. I’ve just never acquired a desire to drink it, for either taste or mood/medicinal reasons, and avoided it for reasons stated. It was always one of those contrarian things I did when young, like not smoking when everyone else was.
I take everyday grounds such as Maxwell House and Folgers and add a heavy pinch of salt. Cuts the acidity a bit and doesn’t taste salty. Just say no to Starbucks. Burnt coffee isn’t worth what they charge.
I can’t drink coffee, but I love the smell of fresh ground beans.
As a life long asthmatic I drink it on a regular basis because it helps reduce the risk of asthma attacks.
BTW Chocolate has also been found to have many health benefits.
http://empoweringwellnessnow.com/the-case-for-chocolate-new-studies-show-health-benefits/
The Case for Chocolate – New Studies Show Health Benefits
Just do what girls do: load it down with so much cream and sugar that it doesn’t taste like coffee.
Or do what I do: drink badass Cuban instant coffee, and drink it black.
Starbucks is for homos and girls.
I love the smell of good coffee, but don’t drink it. I prefer my caffeine in solid form–chocolate, the most important food group!
Coupla thoughts here. First, if you don’t already feel the need for coffee’s stimulation to the degree of the several cups a day they’re saying are beneficial, you probably won’t be very comfortable or happy drinking that much. I expect many of us who do like that much start out with a metabolic rate well below-average. Myself, absent either a crisis to manage or a good cup of coffee, my ground state is half-asleep.
I know, I know, those of you who only see me running Space Access conferences have a hard time picturing my natural state being laid-back and half-asleep. See previous remarks about “a crisis to manage”, plus I make sure there’s always good hot coffee on tap in Hospitality.
Now, it helps a lot if it’s GOOD coffee. NOT the same thing as strong coffee, though good coffee should be fairly strong. It’s not just an esthetic difference – good coffee is chemically different than bad, with different effects. Think smooth stimulation versus jagged-nerve headache inducer. And at its best, it can actually taste like fresh-ground beans smell…
Things that’ll help you make good coffee:
– Rinse the nasty old coffee out of whatever you’re making it with first.
– Ideally, grind it fresh from fresh whole beans. (How do you tell if they’re fresh? They should smell heavenly, not like stale floor-sweepings.) Airtight storage in a fridge or freezer is your friend, both for whole beans and for storing more than one batch’s worth of ground.
– Do NOT brew it with boiling water. You want roughly 10-15F short of (sea-level) boiling. This is the biggest single factor in making coffee that, on a good day when the stars are right, tastes like the beans smell.
– Do NOT leave it boiling away slowly on a burner once brewed. This is the biggest single factor in turning good coffee into nerve-jangle headache-inducer, and is another problem with most modern automatic drip coffeemakers.
– Oh, and do NOT buy “french roast” or “dark roast” – this is basically pre-burnt coffee; it gives you most of the nasty attributes of boiled coffee even if you avoid boiling it. Starbucks makes a mint peddling such swill to yuppie hordes who don’t know any better, ’nuff said.
Fortunately, this isn’t the coffee of the 1970s, nor is it the stuff usually kept on the burner all day in the Midwest.
There is so much really good coffee, spanning almost infinite varieties, that everyone should be able to find what they like.
I learned to drink coffee in the Navy, so my standards started out really low – but they’ve gotten higher with time.
A (long-deceased) mentor of mine, a steely-eyed missile man if ever there was one, amazed me one night by having two cups of coffee before he went off to bed. As the story went, he was so skeptical of people who claimed to be unable to wake up in the morning without it that he decided to convince himself that he couldn’t go to sleep without it. His effort paid off. After a time, he was actually unable to go to sleep without at least one cup of full-strength black coffee.
The big question is how does this fit in with the paleo diet? Somehow its hard to picture Ug the caveman drinking a cup of coffee in his cave before going out with his buddies on a Mammoth hunt
It’s not hard to imagine at all. Given the natural performance enhancement endowed by this particular “bean”, I’d imagine those affected by it returned quite frequently to gather as much as possible. Roasting and brewing for taste came much later. Those unfortunates that weren’t affected by this nector of the gods were deselected from the gene pool. Coffee-enhanced super-Ugs ruled the day.
The case for drinking as much as you like.
Oh, wait. You meant coffee.
Never mind.
Became a coffee drinker late in life, thanks to the invention of flavored creamer. Maxwell House is too bitter – Folger’s is a lot smoother.
I found a non-coffee use for vanilla creamer. Tall glass of milk, I Sweet-n-Low packet**, tsp. of creamer. Yummy.
Aside from the zero calories, saccharine, unlike sugar, will actually dissolve in cold fluids. Aspartame has a bad aftertaste. I might buy sucarlose-sweetened soft drinks if they’d cut the sucralose dose in half.