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By the time you finish watching this video,
eight million cups of coffee will have been
drunk all over the world.
Coffee has been consumed for at least
1,500 years and some say its
impact is so great that it helped fuel
the Enlightenment, which gave rise to some of the
big ideas that underpin the world as we know it.
The main active ingredient of coffee is
caffeine, which is considered the most widely
consumed psychoactive drug on the planet.
So where does coffee come from and
what does it do to us when we drink it?
Coffee comes from the fruit of the
Coffea arabica plant that originated in Ethiopia.
One story claims a ninth Century goat
herder called Kaldi, saw his goats were more
full of energy after eating coffee berries —
so he had a bite too. Historic records suggest the Sufis of Yemen
roasted the seed of the coffee berry to
create the beverage we recognise today.
In the 15th Century, the first coffee
houses
began to appear across the Ottoman
Empire before spreading to Europe in the
following centuries. Coffeehouses in Europe became a
space for discussing business,
politics and new ideas.
One academic - Jurgen Habermas –
even says without coffee we might
not have had the
Enlightenment.
Philosophers like Kant and Voltaire - who
is said to have drunk as many as 72 cups a
day - started to question the Catholic Church’s
interpretation of the world.
Instead they looked to science, believing that everything in the Universe could
be rationally explained. This so-called Age of Enlightenment
radically changed the world as we knew it.
It led to the overthrow of monarchs, the
growth of democracy, and numerous
scientific discoveries.
Coffee also fuelled the slave trade.
The French used slaves from Africa on
plantations in Haiti and by the early 1800s
Brazil was producing a third of the world’s
coffee using African slaves.
Did coffee give rise to capitalism too?
Companies started giving away
coffee to their workers and eventually let
them have coffee breaks.
This wasn’t an altruistic move.
They were trying to increase worker
productivity.
Fast forward to the present and two billion
cups of coffee are consumed every day.
It’s a $90 billion a year industry.
And, more than that, it is a
fundamental social
part of everyday life for
billions of people.
So how does coffee impact the body?
When caffeine enters your digestive
system, it is absorbed via the intestine into the
bloodstream. But the effects only start when caffeine
hits the nervous system. This happens because caffeine has a
chemical structure very similar to that of a
substance produced by our own body:
adenosine. Caffeine binds to the body’s adenosine
receptors, which can be found on the
surface of nerve cells.
It's like a key opening a lock.
Adenosine is known to slow down the
sympathetic nervous system - it reduces your
heart rate and generates a state of drowsiness
and relaxation. By blocking these receptors, caffeine
generates the opposite effect.
Your blood pressure, for example, may
increase slightly, especially if you are not used
to drinking coffee often.
The same goes for brain activity:
caffeine stimulates the brain,
suppresses hunger and helps you stay in a state of alertness, so you
can concentrate for longer.
Caffeine can have a positive impact on
your mood, inhibit feelings of fatigue, and can
improve physical performance.
So, many athletes use it as a
supplement.
These effects can last between 15
minutes and two hours.
The body removes caffeine five to 10
hours after consuming it but caffeine’s residual
effects can last even longer.
If you want to optimise caffeine's
effects on your body, experts suggest abstaining from caffeine in the afternoon
- so your cup of coffee the following
morning has more impact.
Coffee also requires care when it’s drunk.
For healthy adults, the recommended
[maximum] limit is 400 milligrams of caffeine a day.
That’s about four or five cups of coffee.
Exceeding this limit can lead to side
effects such as insomnia, nervousness, anxiety,
tachycardia, stomach discomfort, nausea and
headache.
Toxic effects, like seizures, can be seen
after the rapid consumption of around
1,200 milligrams of caffeine
- that’s the equivalent of around 12 cups of coffee.
Of course these limits vary from person
to person: some people are genetically more
sensitive to caffeine. But when drunk in moderation, coffee
can be good for your health.
For instance, it’s associated with a
reduced risk for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, some cancers and Parkinson’s.
And these health gains aren't just
linked to caffeine.
Coffee has other beneficial substances,
such as chlorogenic acid, a potent antioxidant
that may reduce the risk of many diseases.
So next time you grab a cup of coffee,
you might not look at it the same again.
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