Coffee's Mysterious Healing Powers

That morning jolt of coffee may be doing you a world of good, in addition to giving you the caffeine rush.

After some 19,000 studies on coffee, researchers are seeing it's nearly a magic elixir.

Of course, too much coffee can have some unwelcome side effects, but apparently, coffee can boost athletic performance, reduce Parkinson's Disease and even help with headaches.

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Dunkin' Donuts Takes on Starbucks with New Drinks

By Nichola Groom

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dunkin' Donuts is looking to undercut the world's largest coffee shop chain -- Starbucks Corp. -- with a line of lower-priced coffee drinks for U.S. consumers that could brew up a war of the lattes.

The doughnut chain, a unit of British spirits group Allied Domecq Plc, says an espresso drinks line was introduced in the New York area this week and will hit the Mid-Atlantic and Philadelphia markets in the next month.

The company said it would soon have cappuccinos and lattes in its more than 4,000 U.S. stores to compete with about 5,500 U.S. Starbucks shops across the country. Starbucks is the largest coffee chain in the world with 7,500 stores.

Dunkin' Donuts chief executive John Luther said the chain is confident it will be able to leverage the popularity of its brewed coffee to capitalize on the appeal of specialty drinks.

And to attract customers, the chain says it plans to keep prices roughly 20 percent lower than competitors and sizes simple and straight forward -- small, medium and large -- to take on Starbucks' tall, grande and venti drink sizes.

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Cup O' Joe Millionaires

A quarter for a cup of joe? Feh. There's big money in them there beans. Starbucks started the revolution. Now Rick Munarriz checks in on the coffee wars to see if anyone has enough buzz to compete with the giant.

By Rick Aristotle Munarriz (TMF Edible)

It's been nearly a decade since the infamous McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) coffee lawsuit. An elderly woman leaving a Mickey D's drive-thru window, trying to add some cream and sugar into her steaming cup of joe, mishandled the coffee and suffered third degree burns. She sued the world's largest restaurant chain and won. It was a $2.7 million award that was ultimately reduced to $480,000 on appeal. Both parties eventually settled out of court.

In retrospect, there is one amazing McNugget to this hot molten java story that rarely gets mentioned. That errant cup of coffee? McDonald's was charging just $0.49 for the stuff! Flash forward to the amazing growth of Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) and its elasticity -- if not audacity -- to charge $2 for a cup of coffee or even more for flavored bean water.

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Over 350 Coffee Links

Take a look at our Coffee Links, and you will find over 350 links to coffee related websites. If you have a website, either commercial or personal, and it is not included in our Coffee Links, then we are not complete.

Adding your link is easy and it is a free service of Badgett's Coffee eJournal.

Click on the "Add A Link" link in the upper left margin of this page and you will find 23 categories. You may put your link in more than one category.

Robert

Lawsuit brews as Starbucks takes aim at China chain

Reuters

SHANGHAI, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Starbucks (nasdaq: SBUX - news - people) is suing a rival Shanghai chain whose name in Chinese is virtually identical to that of the U.S. giant that introduced coffee culture to a nation of tea lovers.

Starbucks Corp is taking aim at Shanghai Xing Ba Ke Coffee Shop Co, whose Mandarin name is written and pronounced the same as that chosen by the U.S. chain when it first set up operations in China -- the focus of an aggressive international expansion.

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Coffee farmers fight to survive in Mexico

Low wholesale prices, market glut are blamed

By Tessie Borden / Gannett News Service

Jack Kurtz / Gannett News Service

TAPACHULA, Mexico — By this time of year in Mexico’s Chiapas state, farmers and laborers have spent months harvesting the coffee crop, moving from bush to bush in the shadow of the Tacana volcano, selecting the berries that yield the beans that flavor your morning java.

They are men like Armando Lorenzo Dominguez Rodriguez, a small producer of coffee who farms almost 5 acres of rich soil near Ejido Agustin de Iturbide, north of the border town of Tapachula.

For the past five years, Dominguez Rodriguez, along with 25 million other coffee growers around the world, has been fighting a losing battle that threatens the growers’ already meager incomes.

Gourmet coffee may be more popular than ever in the United States thanks to Starbucks: Retail volume sales of coffee rose 37 percent from 1997 to 2002.

But in Mexico, more and more coffee farmers are abandoning their crops because wholesale prices set largely by multinational companies are at historic lows.

Many farmers immigrate to the United States. Some die.

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Coffee-Brewing Technique Might Affect Cholesterol

Joseph Graedon and Teresa Graedon

Joseph Graedon is a pharmacologist. Teresa Graedon has a doctorate in medical anthropology and is a nutrition expert.

Q. I use a French press coffee maker, which in my opinion makes a superior cup of coffee. A friend said that brewing coffee this way will raise my cholesterol, so I should pour the coffee through a paper filter (like the ones in drip coffeepots). This seems silly, but my cholesterol is a little high. Would this make a difference?

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Coffee, tea or luxury?

BY DEEPTI HAJELA
ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK — Think that morning dose of double latte in a paper cup is a real luxury? Hardly.

A new exhibit showcases some real richness, such as silver jugs and porcelain cups used for chocolate, coffee and tea as they swept through Europe as upper-crust drinks of choice.

Chocolate, Coffee, Tea opened Feb. 3 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and runs through July 11. Taking over one of the museum's galleries, the several dozen items cover a time period from the 17th century to the very beginning of the 20th century.

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Hot for Coffee? Specialty Coffee Month Takes the Chill Out of February

PR Newswire

LONG BEACH, Calif., Feb. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Coffee lovers, grab your mugs. Whether you crave a dark, pungent espresso or a frothy barista concoction, this is your time to indulge. February is Specialty Coffee Month, a collective effort within the industry to educate consumers about what makes specialty coffee so special. Along with some special brews, your local coffeehouse may serve up some additional information about the 3 C's -- climate, care and craft -- that go into making specialty coffee.

But just what is specialty coffee? The incredibly sensory definition almost makes you smell the aroma of fine coffee beans. Specialty coffee is defined as coffee that has no defects and a distinctive flavor in the cup. These are the highest-quality green beans, roasted to their greatest flavor potential by true craftspeople and then properly brewed to well-established standards. An incredibly complex art, the preparation of specialty coffee places high value on climate, care and craft from seed to cup.

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Coffee: An empty cup for growers

Phil Bloomer
International Herald Tribune

OXFORD, England When it comes to making money out of food or drink, coffee is the king. No other sector produces profits quite like it. Major coffee roasters are riding of a cash cow that seemingly never runs out of milk. At the top of the ladder, things couldn't be better. But at the bottom, 25 million farmers are sinking deeper and deeper into poverty. In the space of three years, the price of coffee on the international market has sunk to its lowest point for over 100 years. In the last three years alone, the price of coffee has been slashed in half.
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While at the top of the supply chain this means profit margins are even better, at the bottom farmers are being mugged.

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