Coffee Species

Ther are two main species of coffee produced in the world today.

1. Coffea Arabica
Making up 60% of world production, it is highly prized for the fine quality of it's greenish blue beans.

1. Coffea Robusta
Making up 40% of world production, it is a hardy species, grown in Africa and Asia where tha climate is unsuitable for "Arabica". The beans are small, roundish and brown in colour.

Coffee and Cognition

Many people drink coffee for its ability to increase short term recall and increase IQ. Likewise, in tests of simple reaction time, choice reaction time, incidental verbal memory, and visuospatial reasoning, participants who regularly drank coffee were found to perform better on all tests, with a positive relationship between test scores and the amount of coffee regularly drunk. Elderly participants were found to have the largest effect associated with regular coffee drinking. Another study found that women over the age of 80 performed significantly better on cognitive tests if they had regularly drunk coffee over their lifetimes.

Coffee and Gout

Advertisements for coffee in London in 1657 claimed that the beverage was a cure for scurvy, gout and other ills, and back in the 1500's it was said to cure the plague.

Although there is no evidence that it can cure the plague, recent research does in fact show that drinking coffee reduces the risk of gout.

A Brief History of Coffee (part 1)

The Origins of coffee are in the highlands of Ethiopia. Before the !0th century nomadic trides discovered that the fruit was edible and could be ground and mixed with animal fat to produce a high energy food.
Around the 14th century the coffee bean was introduced to Arabia via Yemen. It expanded rapidly thoughout these countries and drinking coffee soon became a habit. By the end of the 1500's trading companies saw the great commercial value of coffee and soon brought it to Europe. The first coffee reached Venice in 1630 and within a short time coffee houses appeared in Italy, the Netherlands, Britain, France and Germany. By 1689 Paris alone had 250 coffee houses.