Coffee: The New Health Food?

Plenty of health benefits are brewing in America's beloved beverage.

By Sid Kirchheimer
WebMD Feature Reviewed By Michael Smith, MD

Want a drug that could lower your risk of diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and colon cancer? That could lift your mood and treat headaches? That could lower your risk of cavities?

If it sounds too good to be true, think again.

Coffee, the much maligned but undoubtedly beloved beverage, just made headlines for possibly cutting the risk of the latest disease epidemic, type 2 diabetes. And the real news seems to be that the more you drink, the better.

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A coffee master's ground rules for flavor

By Emily Shartin, Boston Globe Staff

John Barry tastes coffee the way some people taste wine. He smells it, considers its body and acidity, and he can even recommend foods to pair it with. He can often tell in one sip whether a coffee has Latin American or Indonesian origins.

Barry, who is based in Newton, is a district manager and regional coffee and tea specialist for the java giant Starbucks Corp. He has been certified by the company as a ''coffee master," a process that typically takes 1-3 months, and he offers regular tasting seminars for staff and the public.

New England coffee drinkers, whom Barry describes as having a ''mild palate" tend to prefer Starbucks' Breakfast Blend -- probably of little surprise given the popularity of Canton's Dunkin' Donuts and its mild morning brew.

But customers who want to venture beyond should consider such characteristics as body, which is the weight of the beverage on your tongue. Breakfast Blend, for instance, is light-bodied. Coffees from Indonesia are more full-bodied.

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Coffee shops - Off the boil

Sector Insight: Coffee shops - Off the boil

Design Bulletin (U.K.)
Jane Bainbridge Marketing

Rapid growth will be followed by revenue-generating non-core services in the coffee shop market.

The background: The coffee-shop sector has enjoyed a decade of rapid expansion as branded chains have taken over the nation's high streets.

But the next few years should see a slowdown in growth. The market is maturing, with inner cities already reaching saturation point. As a result, chains are looking to product development and extra services such as music and internet access to drive sales growth, rather than franchising and licensing. There may still be scope to open shops in the suburbs and rural regions, but such expansion is unlikely to go unchallenged by the anti-globalisation lobby.

UK consumers have embraced coffee-shop culture with gusto since branded shops started to appear in the 90s. Clutching a cappuccino has become such an integral part of the day for many urbanites that the market was worth £449m last year, a rise of 109% since 1999, according to Mintel.

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Arabica Coffee Futures Rise in Tokyo: World's Biggest Mover

April 25 (Bloomberg) -- Arabica coffee futures in Tokyo rose 4.8 percent, the biggest fluctuation of any commodity market today, on concern drought will lower supply from Brazil, the world's top grower of the bean variety.

Brazil may produce 16 percent less coffee from its June-to- August harvest than a year earlier because of drought in the states of Parana, Sao Paulo and Rondonia, and fall in productivity, Vilmondes Olegario da Silva, head of the Agriculture Ministry's coffee department said on April 22.

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Roasters do coffee with conscience

By Erin Allday, (SANTA ROSA) PRESS DEMOCRAT

SEBASTOPOL — Raising his voice over the grumble of a cappuccino maker in the corner, Mark Inman is talking about sustainable farming, the U.S. war on drugs and poverty in Central America — and how it all comes back to a cup of gourmet coffee.

It's an easy connection to make, Inman insists, leaning over his desk and sipping from a tiny cup of espresso made with beans roasted by his Taylor Maid Farms.

Sustainable farming helps keep growers out of the drug industry and above the poverty line, he said. If consumers only understood the impact they could have on South American farmers by paying more for their coffee, they would, Inman said.

"We don't want to guilt the soccer moms into buying organic coffee," said Inman, 36. "We want to make it easy for them to buy good coffee at fair rates. Coffee is a social vehicle and political vehicle, not just a food product."

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Iced Out

As the chilled coffee season approaches, watered-down beverage fraud gets our columnist hot under the collar

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Gersh Kuntzman
Newsweek
Updated: 6:25 p.m. ET April 25, 2005

April 25 - Ah, summer: The days are longer, temperatures are higher and people willingly pay more for watered-down coffee. Yes, iced-coffee season is upon us, which means that scam artists are gearing up to charge you more for less. But this year, you're going to fight back, aren't you? You're not going to let them charge you $3 for an iced coffee when they charge $2 for the same sized regular coffee, are you?

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Gourmet Coffee Stops Decrease Gas Mileage

Gourmet Coffee Stops Decrease Gas Mileage - Home Brewed Premium Coffee Reduces Traffic Congestion While Revving Commuter Engines

PARLIN, N.J., April 22 /PRNewswire/ -- A researcher has stirred up the coffee commuter mug with the suggestion that morning rush hour traffic is worsened by stops for daily morning gourmet coffee at Starbucks and other premium coffee houses. Nancy McGuckin, a travel behavior analyst, studied a report called "National Household Travel Survey" by the U.S. Department of Transportation as the basis of her conclusions.

McGuckin dubbed her discovery "The Starbucks Effect" because during the period she studied, Starbucks added over 4000 new locations (1995 - 2001). Although not limited only to trips to coffee houses, the research suggests that running additional errands in the morning on the way to work has contributed to traffic congestion and increased gridlock. This is because people divert from the shortest and fastest route, to one that leads them past the coffee house or dry cleaners.

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