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Decaffeinated, Real Coffee
reeb writes "ABC News Australia reports that Brazilian scientists have discovered a naturally occurring but rare coffee plant, native to Ethiopia, that is 'almost free of caffeine.' Decaf without the genetic engineering?"
From www.kraftfoods.com/maxwellhouse/mh_decaff.html
The Maxwell House® Family of naturally decaffeinated coffees offers the full-flavored taste of regular coffee, without the caffeine. Maxwell House® decaffeinates its coffees using pure water and natural effervescence. The effervescence gently draws the caffeine out of the beans, preserving their delicate coffee flavor.
I don't touch decaf, but who would genetically engineer decaf beans?
This is important because the headline/blurb is misleading.
Decaffeination is done through a process called 'supercritical fluid extraction' with carbon dioxide as a solvent. Turns out, with enough pressure and temperature, a substance can go 'supercritical', where it has the simultaneous properties of a gas, liquid, and solid. By fine tuning the temperature and pressure, it can act as a very selective solvent, only leeching out the caffeine and leaving in all the other delicious coffee flavors. The caffeine is then recovered and sold in pills or other products.
Not that you should drink decaf. Caffeine is the primary reason to drink coffee.
You're looking in the wrong crowd. :)
My wife is one such person. She used to groom dogs, and she worked at a pet shop and at a local chapter of the Humane Society. So she's familiar with the results of poor breeding.
It's not so much that breeding for a particular trait is bad, as much as doing so at the detriment of other important traits.
The AKC is pure evil. The fact that they have "specs" for registerable breeds and that they allow "line breeding" and inbreeding is proof (in my mind, at least). See this link for evidence. This can result in bad traits. Two well-known examples are that Dalmations are often deaf (though, to be fair, it's more common in any purebred dog than a mutt), and that German Shepherds often develop bad hips.
It may be an American (capitalistic make-money-fast) kind of thing. Appearently, the original shepherd lines from Germany were execllent dogs. It wasn't until they were bred for AKC specs that they went downhill. Again, German Angora rabbits are excellent dual-purpose meat and wool animals (we've researched this, as we raise own own rabbits for meat as well as wool), but the Americanized version -- the "show quality" one -- is lacking in both traits, but it looks prettier.
Silly breeders. :)
Method of processing duck feet