Thursday, January 23, 2003


running west

maybe part of joining the e.u., nato, and western europe -- leaving your mitteleuropa roots behind forever -- is to say ciao turkish coffee and hello cappucino?

an australian entreprenuer is taking the bet that the czechs are going to go for italian-style coffee once they get a taste of it. i've talked about regional coffee cultures here before, and this looks like a situation fraught with interest. . .

and then there are those who think that old nasty-tasting hippie concoction, yerba mate, is going to take off big.

believe me, you can't put enough chocolate, caramel, and sugar in that stuff to make it palatable. . .what does yerba mate taste like for those readers fortunate enough not have this unpleasant experience? i would frankly describe it as having a sour, grassy, weedy taste -- like soggy alfalfa sprouts -- overlaid with a mouth-puckering bitterness.

just thinking about makes me shudder. where this false perception that a couple of cups of coffee a day is bad for you comes from, i have no idea. heaven knows, i encounter it on a daily basis. . .and long-time readers know i have the links to a pile of actual peer-reviewed research that shows many health benefits come from drinking moderate amounts of coffee daily.

but if you're so worried about the caffeine in a cup of coffee, wait 'til you read the skinny on yerba. it contains caffeine, just as coffee does, only more of it! while the average arabica coffee bean contains about 1.5% caffeine, yerba has 2%, and guarana as much as 5%!

so despite what the so-called "health food" websites say about yerba mate and other herbs like guarana, you're not getting anything different or better for you: caffeine is caffeine. only a well-prepared cappucino from specialty arabica beans tastes far better than yerba mate, in my book!

posted by fortune | 5:53 PM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments