Morning Coffee from Africa

 When you think about coffee you feel the aroma and the taste in your brain. Coffee has become one of the most commonly consumed drug without any social stigma. Yes coffee is a drug to us a poison to insects, today we are going to have our Sunday coffee in the morning and look at the evolution and the impact of it in our world.

  

Its Origin

 No one knows the exact origin about the person who discovered it or the location, as per the folk stories a man with his Sheep herd In some location in west Africa saw an uncommon behavior among the sheep and he notices that they were dancing in ecstasy after eating some fruits in the jungle.

The man also tried eating the fruits and he also had ecstasy and thus with this  started the relationship with humans and coffee. Apart from this folk tale there is scientific and archaeological evidence for the origin of coffee from Africa, from there it has traveled around the world with the help of European colonialism.

 During the 15th century the roasting and brewing of the coffee was widely done in the Arabian peninsula and in Yemen. In the 16th century the coffee had reached almost the entire middle east, Turkey and the North of Africa. During the heights of the Islamic culture in the region coffee was considered to be an alternative for wine, since drinking alcohol is forbidden in Islam. In order to maintain the supremacy of this drink the coffee which was exported was roasted , which will prevent from producing the plant. Things changed in the late part of the 16th century when a sufi smuggled a few unroasted beans from the region and he came to Mysore. The same was done by each of the European powers and took it to their colonies like Ceylon, Indonesia etc. and started planting in high quantity and flooding the European market. On the contrary for the East India Company it was easy for them to start tea plantations rather than coffee and it started flooding its country with tea, and thus started a tea culture in Britain.

 During the late 16th and the 17th centuries coffee houses were considered as the breeding ground for revolutionary activities, France was one such country which saw a lot of underground activities in the cafes and it was one of the foundations of the French revolution. It was even banned in some European counties briefly for this same reason, the cause of this fear is because Europe during the middle ages faced with a lot of deadly pandemics and people feared to eat or drink because they don’t know whether it is free from contamination. This was applicable to water also, so the entire Europe started drinking beer or other types of alcohol but this was further weakening their thinking ability and discussions in the bars were mostly violent. The café houses were the opposite to the fights and shouting without sense, people started to talk with sense and this was a perfect drug that would emulate your thinking and not make you sober.     

Is coffee a psychoactive drug?

 Yes coffee is one of the widely consumed psychoactive drug in the world. 

Caffeine in coffee  promotes central nervous system stimulation, making you feel alert and this is because of the Adrenaline is triggered by caffeine. This type of chemical is being produced by some plants in order to protect from small insects, the same chemical is also present in tea leaves but it is less than coffee. Coffee is considered a beautiful concussion of caffeine and the taste and that has taken it a most widely used drug or stimulant.     

Should we really drink coffee?

I am not a scientist or a doctor to comment on this  question but I can give you some hints on what is like consuming coffee for an average human. The average coffee consumption per day by a human is 3 cups this includes with milk and black coffee, this is not so harmful . We Indians are not in the top 25

 coffee consuming countries in the world , still in south India the domination of coffee culture is very much visible. Since coffee makes you alert, it is always recommended not to take it after 6 PM because this could affect your sleep . In Italy it is a taboo to have cappuccino coffee after 11 AM and in US people don’t take coffee in the evening. My opinion is coffee in moderation is good and for some could be adventurous but how you take to coffee on regular basis also could impact your health namely the intake of sugar, artificial sweetening or even milk(yes milk itself is harmful, a debate for another day). 

 

Exploitation by Coffee

Coffee has a rich history of exploiting people across the globe and it has been still in practice even after so much of struggle. Most of  the African slaves were used for cultivation of coffee in the Caribbean islands ,Haiti and Latin America and most of the production was extracted from countries like Brazil and Costa Rica. After all the struggles and the Independence of these countries the farmers are exploited, in order to stop this a concept of fair trade in coffee was mooted in the 60's and came into force in the 80's . The concept of fair trade in to make sure the farmers get the right price for their produce, this has been seen has a way forward for building communities and increasing the standard of the coffee producing farmer. On the other side there is criticism that "Fair Trade" is just a label to cover up the exploitation, it is up to the individual  to make the decision to buy a product or brand.