|
Acclaimed by the consumers, condemned by the doctors: this has been, for years, the contradictory attitude of the humanity towards the coffee, secular and controversial fame drink.
But in the last years science and medicine have discredited many commonplaces about the coffee that accused the consumption of this drink, first among all the one to be the cause of the illnesses more feared: from the heart attack to all the forms of cancer, from the defects at birth to the premature birth…
«In the past, the use of coffee had a political meaning: who clandestinely met for a cup of coffee was accused of plotting subversive plots, therefore they were persecuted more by the cops that by the doctors! », the professor Amleto Di Amicis says, manager of the Unit of Documentation and Nutritional Information of INRAN (National Institute of Search for the Food stuff and the Nutrition).
They even say that in the ‘700 king Gustavo III of Sweden, condemning two thieves, decided that the sentence had to be given through the administration of thick doses of coffee.
Not only the two convicts didn't die (even after four attempts of poisoning!), but both lived up to 83 years!
«When one speaks about coffee, it is very easy that reality and legend confuse each other, but what doesn't confuse anymore by now in medical-scientific limits, it is the harmful effect of this drink on the organism», Di Amicis continues.
«In fact everybody can see that the populations that regularly consume up to five cups a day of coffee have a meaningful increase of the expectation of life».
This happens because coffee has innumerable beneficent qualities:
1. Stimulating: it benefits the concentration, it helps in the vigilance and in the overcoming of the tiredness, and it strengthens the memory and attenuates the headache
2. Antioxidant: consumed during a meal based on food with high oxiding potential, it protects the low density lipoproteins (LDL) from the oxidation, reaction at the base of the arteriosclerosis; besides it acts on the glycolysis and on the oxidation of the fats, making them degrade more quickly: this makes quickly available energy for the physical activity
3. Co-adjuvant of the metabolism: coffee increases the energy's dispersion introduced by the diet not making it available like reserve in the form of fat
4. Anorectic: coffee doesn't bring calories (a cup without milk or sugar either is not more than two calories); also, by its thermo-genetic activity and the most rapid use of the fats, coffee helps to keep the ideal weight
5. Protective for some liver pathology (cirrhosis and bilious calculosis).
Coffee is a real ally of health! Let's drink it.
Source: National Institute of Search for the Food stuff and the Nutrition
CURIOSITY
For many centuries it was diffused the conviction that coffee was only an exciting and strengthening food; the Bedouins thought even that it fought against the thirst, so that, crushing and mixing the coffee berries with some fat, they got some breads to eat during the trips in the desert and before the battles.
THE IDEA...
The Arabs were the first ones (around the year 1000 AD) to have the idea to make coffee in dust (after having roasted it) and add some warm water to get the drink that we know today.
JUST A LITTLE OF HISTORY
In 1683, it was open the first Viennese coffee house. The legend tells in that year the Turks, forced to abandon the siege in Vienna, during the flight, they left back quite a lot sacks of coffee. By these sacks the love of the Austrians was born for this product. Not by chance, the Viennese coffee preparation uses a method very similar to the Turkish one: it is different only because it is filtered.
Coffee was very considered during the Enlightenment movement: all the important followers of the Enlightenment were drinkers of coffee (it seems that Voltaire drank about thirty cups of it a day), to be awake and prepared to the debate. To the coffee, an illustrious group of Lombard followers of the Enlightenment like the brothers Pietro and Alessandro Verri, Cesare Beccaria and other members of the "Accademia dei Pugni” entitled the first Italian magazine. On the pages of" Il Caffè", they deal with some matters of various kind: from the sciences to the arts, to the social life.
The Greek Coffee is not a particular kind of coffee. It was one of the fulcrums in the artistic Rome of end ‘700 and the beginning of ‘800. Every foreign artist came up to there to ask his own consecration.
At the time of the French Revolution, the Coffee houses were places of meeting where they talked above all of politics, and where the revolutionaries developed projects and proposals. The French Coffee houses were defined "the spoken press of the Revolution", and every house distinguished a political tendency. The ideas of a man were, in fact, judged according to the Coffee house that he frequented.
THE COFFEE AT HOME
The quantity of water in the percolator has to reach half of the internal screw of the special container; the coffee in the percolator must not be pressed but it needs to create a little pointed mountain helping oneself with a teaspoon;
To keep intact the fragrance and the aroma of the coffee it is advisable to keep it in a hermetically sealed container; coffee can be kept in refrigerator, but it must always be kept into a hermetically sealed container.
Coffee must never be kept nearby to other products with a strong odour (for ex.: cheeses, meats, infusions, and so on...) because it is a product that tends to absorb the near odours and this, obviously, alters the taste of it.
|
