Revitalizing Haiti Through Coffee

When one thinks of Haiti the mind doesn't immediately think "coffee." In the 18th century when Haiti was still under French rule the country grew the first coffee species ever cultivated arabica; some of the best beans in the world! But for decades this small island off the coast of Florida has been literally and figuratively torn asunder by disasters both natural and man-made. However according to a May 2011 article in the Wall Street Journal Haiti was once king of the coffee growers.

"Once one of the largest coffee producers and exporters in the world, Haiti's long history of economic and political chaos, combined with deforestation, let the industry ailing. In recent years, coffee exports have been minuscule and declining, less than 0.008% of world exports, according to the International Coffee Organization. (Sumathi Reddy, WSJ May 20, 2011)

Today however, despite the 2010 earthquake that devastated the island country, Haiti's coffee farmers are back in business and once again growing Haitian Bleu coffee beans. Many are using the coffee industry to help revitalize the still struggling country through fair-trade-plus agreements that allow growers to retain a larger portion of the profit from the sale of their beans while ensuring they utilize sustainable and organic processes to produce the beans. This renewal of a profitable industry in Haiti provides economic support to one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere!

Haiti recently hosted it's first International Coffee Summit where Minister of the Interior, Thierry Mayard-Paul made the following comments about the importance of revitalizing Haiti's coffee industry.

"Coffee is one of the many areas where we are looking for partnerships, joint ventures and other collaborations, and we are ready to do everything we can to help facilitate this important engagement." The Minister also addressed how, as part of a larger agricultural plan, Haitian coffee could play a significant role not only in economic development, but also in promoting decentralization and job creation in rural areas." (Minister of the Interior of Haiti, Thierry Mayard-Paul, Sacramento Bee November 17, 2011)

Friday's Coffee hopes to play a part in this re-emergence of Haitian coffee in the near future!

Resources Quoted

The Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2010/01/haitis-coffee-will-it-come-back/34264/

Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704816604576333693383490916.html

Coffee Research: http://www.coffeeresearch.org/coffee/haiti.htm

Just Haiti: http://www.justhaiti.org/

The Sacramento Bee: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/17/4063034/haitian-coffee-seeks-to-regain.html

Upcoming Events November & December 2011

Friday's Coffee is very excited to be showcasing our coffee at several upcoming events in the next two months. Visit us at any of the events to taste "coffee as it should be!"

November 20th: 2 to 5 pm

Customer Appreciation Celebration

Food, Entertainment & Prizes

The Place 2 Be Hair Studio

500 Madison Ave

Santa Clara, CA

November 28th: 4 pm

Tree Lighting & Holiday Boutique

Caroling, Boutiques, & Refreshments

St. Patrick's Seminary & University

Menlo Park, CA320 Middlefield Road

Coffee linked with lower depression risk in women

Caffeine is the most frequently used central nervous system stimulant in the world, and coffee consumption accounts for about 80 percent of caffeine use.

Drinking coffee offers a boost of energy and a lift in well being, said Alberto Ascherio of Harvard School of Public Health.

"This short-term effect is what drives the consumption of caffeine," said Ascherio, whose study appears in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"Here we are looking at long-term chronic use of caffeinated coffee," Ascherio said in a telephone interview.

His team studied more than 50,000 women enrolled in a health study of nurses. The women had an average age of 63, and none were depressed when they enrolled in the study.

Ascherio's team measured coffee consumption based on data on the women for 14 years dating back to 1976. They then classified the women according to how much coffee they drank and followed them for an additional 10 years.

"We found that those women who regularly drink four or more cups of coffee a day have 20 percent lower risk of developing depression than those who rarely or never drink coffee," Ascherio said.

The team focused specifically on coffee, but they had similar findings when they looked at overall caffeine consumption, including caffeinated soft drinks and chocolate. They found that women who were in the top fifth of caffeine consumption had a 20 percent lower risk of depression than women in the bottom fifth.

The team built a two-year gap or latency period between when they measured caffeine consumption and their assessment for depression to make sure they were not just capturing women who were too depressed to be regular coffee drinkers.

Ascherio said there have been very few studies that look at the long-term effects of coffee consumption. One smaller study in Finland showed men who drank a lot of coffee were less likely to commit suicide.

And Ascherio's own team has shown that drinking a lot of coffee may be protective against Parkinson's disease in both men and women.

He said it is not yet clear how coffee might protect against depression, but there are some hints.

Animal studies have shown that caffeine protects against certain neurotoxins. And brain receptors that respond to caffeine are concentrated in the basal ganglia, an area that is important for both depression and Parkinson's disease.

Ascherio said low-dose, chronic stimulation of these receptors may make them more efficient.

He stressed that the study does not prove that coffee lowers depression risk -- only that it might be protective against depression in some way.

And many more studies will be needed to show whether coffee can be used to prevent depression, Ascherio said.

SOURCE: bit.ly/pjSydu Archives of Internal Medicine, September 26, 2011.

Fascinating Coffee

Coffee facts – did you know?
There are so many misconceptions about coffee like it accelerates heart disease, gives you stomach ache, makes you put on weight, causes cancer, etc – the list goes on, but these are generally misconceptions and myths, especially if coffee consumption is solely blamed for these conditions. Recent research has proved otherwise and just like at the beginning of the coffee journey when coffee was seen as a great blessing, you will be glad to know that it still is. 

So for example did you know that ….
A cup of well prepared coffee has more anti-oxidants than a bowl of fruit – OK ! you’re asking what are anti-oxidants – a simple explanation, they are one of the many elements used to help fight cancer so rather than causing cancer, coffee might help you fight it.
Coffee accelerates the impact of paracetemol (headache pills for some), which means that if you have a headache and you take a headache pill which contains paracetemol and follow it with a cup of coffee, it can help get rid of your headache faster, provided you don’t go banging your head against the wall.

In general, follow the rule of life for most things – “too much of anything is bad for you”. True, some people might feel nervous and unable to sleep if they have one cup of coffee, and true too, some people might down 20 espressos a day and not feel anything – it’s all about tolerance. I like coffee but I don’t have more than 5 cups of any type of coffee a day. However, I also have a double espresso an hour before I go to bed and it won’t keep me from falling asleep. However, for some people, any type of caffeine after midday affects them for the rest of the day. You’ve just got to know yourself and not push the boundaries, so to take it out on coffee, is just a simple excuse – what else did you eat and what kind of lifestyle do you lead ?

Do You Know the Real Story of How Coffee Was Discovered?

Despite petty squabbles about "where" and "when", most agree that coffee had been used as a beverage and/or food in Ethiopia long before the stories of its "discovery' began to circulate. With that in mind, however, no self-respecting coffee site would be complete without including the fable about how coffee was discovered.
In Ethiopia, there was an excellent goat herder named Kaldi, who suddenly awakened from a rather distressing dream to discover his goats behaving quite conspicuously. One of his old bucks was kicking up dust and cavorting around like a kid goat and the rest of the herd, well they just weren’t at all themselves. (in a good way!)

Upon further investigation he discovered that they were quickly and happily consuming the berries of a native bush. Still recovering from his depressing dream, Kaldi, pinching himself to make sure he really was awake, decided that what’s obviously good for the goat must be good for the goat herder. He thus descended upon the bush with abandon, gulping berries with unbridled enthusiasm!

Soon he became full of vigor, completely forgetting his bad dream, and joined in the happy dance with his goats. It would have been a sad thing that day if Kaldi had taken this discovery to his grave but, thankfully, fate took a much kinder twist.

One fine day a monk happened by to discover a mesmerizing ballet of sorts going on with Kaldi and his goats. In his astonishment, he questioned Kaldi in regards to the origin of such riotous celebration. Kaldi joyfully shared the story of the bush and the magical berries.

The monk, being a wise old soul, perceived the magical enlightening berries as a divine revelation of sorts, a gift from God as it were, solving his problem of falling sound asleep during meditation. He saw it as a way to help his brothers solve similar problems with focus and concentration desperately needed during long hours on the... uh... the internet! Yeh, that's it!

He then spent many days experimenting with the cleaning, drying, and grinding of the berries and the making of a “tea”. Thus, Kaldi and the wise old monk, however inadvertently, gave the priceless gift of  Friday's Coffee to the world!


Well the story went something like that.

Raise Your Mugs,

fridayscoffee.com

5 Health Reasons To Drink Your Coffee

We love our coffee!  That goes without saying, it tastes great, perks us up and makes everyone else bearable on a Monday morning.  But the immediate benefits of coffee are not the only reasons to love it.

Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D., Associate Nutrition Editor at EatingWell Magazine has given us five health reasons that we should not stop drinking coffee.  Here they are:
1. It protects your heart:Moderate coffee drinkers (1 to 3 cups/day) have lower rates of stroke than noncoffee drinkers, an effect linked to coffee’s antioxidants. Coffee has more antioxidants per serving than blueberries, making it the biggest source of antioxidants in American diets. All those antioxidants may help suppress the damaging effect of inflammation on arteries. Immediately after drinking it, coffee raises your blood pressure and heart rate, but over the long term, it actually may lower blood pressure as coffee’s antioxidants activate nitric acid, widening blood vessels.
2. It diverts diabetes: Those antioxidants (chlorogenic acid and quinides, specifically) play another role: boosting your cells’ sensitivity to insulin, which helps regulate blood sugar. In fact, people who drink 4 or more cups of coffee each day may have a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to some studies. Other studies have shown that caffeine can blunt the insulin-sensitivity boost, so if you do drink several cups a day, try mixing in decaf occasionally.
3. Your liver loves it: OK, so the research here is limited, but it looks like the more coffee people drink, the lower their incidence of cirrhosis and other liver diseases. One analysis of nine studies found that every 2-cup increase in daily coffee intake reduced liver cancer risk by 43 percent. Again, it’s those antioxidants—chlorogenic and caffeic acids—and caffeine that might prevent liver inflammation and inhibit cancer cells.
4. It boosts your brain power: Drinking between 1 and 5 cups a day (admittedly a big range) may help reduce risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as Parkinson’s disease, studies suggest. Those antioxidants may ward off brain cell damage and help the neurotransmitters involved in cognitive function to work better.
5. It helps your headaches: And not just the withdrawal headaches caused by skipping your daily dose of caffeine! Studies show that 200 milligrams of caffeine—about the amount in 16 ounces of brewed coffee—provides relief from headaches, including migraines. Exactly how caffeine relieves headaches isn’t clear. But scientists do know that caffeine boosts the activity of brain cells, causing surrounding blood vessels to constrict. One theory is that this constriction helps to relieve the pressure that causes the pain, says Robert Shapiro, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of neurology and director of the Headache Clinic at the University of Vermont Medical School.
So go ahead, drink up and live long!

What's in your cup?

Has your coffee drinking experience been so dismal that at some point,

in the course of your java sipping life,

you hesitated before raising the cup to your lips,

looked straight into the black liquid in total despair and thought to yourself...

"It looks like coffee. It smells like coffee."

"I want it to taste good!"

"It would be nice if it tasted GREAT!"

"For crying out loud... I  JUST WANT  IT  TO  TASTE  LIKE  REAL  COFFEE !!!"

Sip sip sip.

?@%!   Disgusting!

You know what I'm talking about.

Well my friends you're not alone. You're not in some kind of re-occurring coffee nightmare.

You're ok.

Just relax.

I'm here to help.

Friday's Coffee is my true personal love affair with the beverage that we all love so much

and the search that eventually led to fulfillment in drinking this wonderful black brew the way it should be.

There was a lot to learn but it was well worth it.

The journey took me down several interesting side roads which made for some fun, laughs and adventure.

I'm happy to be able to share it with you.

All the best,

Dave