The Healing Powers of Coffee: A Complete Guide to Nature’s Surprising Superfood. / Cal Orey, 2012. Kensington Books. 298 p., notes and bibliography.
How do coffee cures and their healing powers restore our well-being? In so many ways, author Cal Orey assures you, The Healing Powers of Coffee is an appealing idea. For one thing, the idea that coffee can be good for you seems an almost unbelievable claim, one of those we can’t easily accept due to years of media conditioning.
We’ve all bought into the notion of caffeine as a bad substance to ingest. And it is, for some people. Some, who suffer from a variety of sensitivities should probably minimize their exposure to coffee.
Yet herbalists and nutritionists these days reveal coffee’s assets for the population that can handle the drink, and this shows a 180 degree turn around from the concept of coffee as the bad guy for everyone’s daily drinking habits.
Author Cal Orey’s other books in The Healing Powers series of monographs include The Healing Powers of Chocolate, and The Healing Powers of Vinegar. She writes to fascinate the reader with the superb qualities of everyday food and drink, and so advises here about the health benefits of coffee.
The Healing Powers of Coffee is a collection of both facts and beliefs about the brew. Whether focused on health benefits, anti-aging schemes, personal care and beauty products, housecleaning, or cooking, Orey shows that in fact coffee does have good effects on people. Orey, like many baby boomers, established a love affair with coffee in her early twenties, and chose to infuse the book with personal narrative and how drinking coffee accompanies her daily enterprise, with special appearances for special occasions. In a coffee-drinker’s world, the mix of facts, inspiration and anecdote is meant to please every taste.
Orey is passionate about coffees with added flavorings and thus provides an entire chapter on them. For her own coffee habit, she likes custom amounts of chocolate shavings, spices, and for a bit of indulgence, even ice cream. She holds that a fresh layer of flavor and add-in flavonoids come from spices like ginger, turmeric and cinnamon.
But how much actual truth, how much science is there behind the statement that coffee is a healthful drink? For one, the millions who drink enough dark roast coffee daily may be avoiding the worst of our degenerative diseases. If in fact they are really healthy, it might be due to substances in the dark-brewed coffee, like flavonoids, fiber and anti-oxidants.
Facts supporting coffee’s healing powers are attributed to associations and organizations which promote coffee as a delicious superfood. Copious Notes endorse the conclusions from research on the dubious brew, and thus the title of this book: that coffee, in most cases, is good for us drinkers of the stuff. Each statement is supported by her research, more consumer-oriented than medically-oriented, yet some of the academic and professional sources include Food Research International, JAgric Food Chemistry, Cancer Epidemial Biomarkers Prevention, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, European Journal of Neurology, Journal of the American Medical Association, American Chemical Society, Annals of Family Medicine, Neuropsychobiology, etc.
The science behind claims that coffee is beneficial points to substances which are powerfully nutritious: there are different acids in coffee—all of which are anti-oxidants, like caffeic and chlorogenic acid, and others like polyphenols, proanthocyanidins, and trigonelline. Lignans and flavonoids in coffee give us anti-cancer and anti-allergenic protection.
That aside, there’s something about the bitter taste in coffee that’s uniquely attractive to people who love it. People are distinguished regarding the bitter taste—-we have receptors on our tongues for many bitter tastes—and we vary in our desire for balance by adding “low-fat” or “full-fat” to a strongly bitter flavor. Orey promotes the use of low-fat milk as a “creamer”, citing the vitamins and minerals in low-fat that are higher than those in whole milk. Further, she emphasizes the Mediterranean diet and exercise along with coffee, as the way to a healthier life.
Most chapters (there are 9) end with a series of “Perks” summarizing coffee benefits that pertain to the chapter’s themes. That way lots of facts are doled out in small portions: this amounts to a total of about 36 facts about the beverage, plus 50 “home cures” alphabetically listed for conditions from Agoraphobia and Asthma to Weight Gain and Universal Emergency Aid. In the Home Cures chapter, Orey describes an un-healthy condition, such as diarrhea, lethargy, etc., and outlines how much, how often and what kind of brew will best provide relief.
For Home Cures supported by research, ones that stood out for me were “bone loss”—and how drinking café au lait daily can help; “burnout”—and how drinking café au lait with cinnamon and chocolate can help; “coughs”—and how drinking coffee with 1 teaspoon of fresh lemon juice and 1 teaspoon of fresh, raw honey can help; “detox”—and how drinking American coffee with a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar and raw honey! can help the condition.
Cooking with coffee as a flavor-booster for the pure value of its strong, rich essence, makes a baked good or entrée more sophisticated as its flavors layer and complexify on your tongue. It’s almost like adding a spice. For cake and baked goods lovers, you know that spice is a premium enhancer of flours and the sweet taste.
Using coffee, you can get pronounced coffee flavor for biscotti and other sweet cakes, ditto for and desserts like puddings and mousse. One of her surprises in cooking with coffee is that baking with chocolate is enhanced with espresso powder. While the coffee flavor itself is concealed, it boosts the chocolate in brownies, cakes, pudding, etc.
Ground coffee beans can live double lives for you—it’s healthy on your body as well as inside it. Consider beauty regimens with coffee grounds and herbs for exfoliating, cellulite, massage.
Why not go green and use coffee grounds to scour dirt and stains? Brewed coffee can lift stains and odors around your house when other methods are not as successful.
In The Healing Powers of Coffee, Orey cites resources from the coffee industry, such as Oldways Preservation Trust, Alpen Sierra Coffee, and Coffees of Hawaii. Authors she particularly trusts are Dr. Sanjiv Chopra, Dr. Jonny Bowden, and Dr. Ann Louise Gittleman.
In 2012, when this book came out, not many authors, doctors, herbalists, or nutritionists were extolling coffee as a beneficial substance. And, true, people were still hanging onto low-fat as a better choice than full-fat. These days any website interested in health will likely post articles on coffee as a health drink as well as those on full-fat milks that are mostly non-dairy. If you are okay with older information, perhaps even comfortable with it, you’ll love The Healing Powers of Coffee for the extra data you’ll find there on the rich dark liquid gold in your daily habits.
Coffee Facts
Coffee beans come nestled in twos inside a protective coating or fruit, called the coffee cherry. It takes coffee shrubs several years to mature to the point where they produce cherries—the fruit that bears coffee beans. This physical description makes coffee beans “fruit pits”!
Coffee trees (actually shrubs) have varieties and are generally known as Arabica or Robusta. Arabicas have less caffeine and milder tastes than Robusta, known for its deep rich flavor and higher caffeine. A third most popular type is Liberica. All coffee requires a tropical climate and “is grown within 1,000 miles of the equator” p.12
Did you know that instant coffee has been around for over 115 years first invented in 1881 by a Frenchman, Alphonse Allais, but made popular in the U.S. by a chemist, Satori Kato, in 1901?
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