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Drink Decaf and Die
jose parinas writes "Decaffeinated -- not caffeinated -- coffee may cause an increase in harmful LDL cholesterol by increasing a specific type of blood fat linked to the metabolic syndrome, hints a new study presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2005."
One minute its a cure for cancer, world hunger and hemmoroids, the next it'll kill you...
Caffeine is good for you! :-P
FP (or almost)
the future is but past forgotten
From the article:
quote:
"Whether coffee has caffeine is not the only thing that differentiates caffeinated from decaffeinated types," Superko said. "Caffeinated and decaffeinated coffees are often made from different species of beans. Caffeinated coffee, by and large, comes from a bean species called coffee Arabica, while many decaffeinated coffees are made from coffee Robusta. The decaffeination process can extract flavonoids and ingredients that give coffee flavor. So decaffeinated brands usually use a bean that has a more robust flavor."
/ end quote
Robusto is named not because it has a more robust flavor than Arabica, but because it is a hardier species. In fact, the taste of robusto coffee is so heinous that only people without the sense to drink freshly ground coffee are susceptible to this travesty. I suppose that also includes decaf drinkers, but it also includes those who drink freeze dried coffees and mass produced brown powder that comes in cans.
To be blunt, Starbucks coffee would actually be a step up in quality from robusto beans.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Not only "deca" but in general everything that we do makes us die!
On the other side, this makes a good point not quitting on coffe. I wonder if ciggarettes w/o nicotine are also deadlyer than the usual ones:) "Smoke ciggarettes w/o nicotine and die!". oh, wait, nicotine doesn't kill..
gtkaml.org
Just what we need. Fat people suing McDonalds for making them fat, and coffee junkies suing $random_coffee_corp.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
This is the last straw - I quite drinkng tea and coffee because caffeine is bad for health, quite smoking because nicotine is bad, quite drinking soft drinks because sugar and all that stuff that makes the drink fizzy is bad for you, and now freaking decaff has been sliently killing me. From now on, all bets are off, I'm just going to smoke crack and to hell with the consequences.
For instance coconut water is better than Soda, Old Coke is better than New Coke, Coffee is better than the decaf crap.
Scientists are re-discovering that age-old medicines like Turmeric, etc., are in fact much safer and healthier than the new fangled ones on market today.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Life could be more a matter of equilibrium. It is known that a small quantity of caffeine is not poison for our bodies rather it has a number of good effects on it.
When we start to do things out of the equilibrium, the situations become unstable (as seen in physiscs).
It is the same as sugar, fat, proteins, vitamins alcohol and the likes.
Maybe the right move could be to get small amounts of plain coffee with a little of sugar (thus no sweeteners and no decaffeinated powders). If it is not healthy, it will be by little.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
I must agree with you.
At my work we have this freeze dried lame excuse for coffee, made from said beans. Taste: terrible.
What's even worse I get this,plastic coating sensation after drinking it. As if I've been licking candles or something.
Ergo: No more of that black water for me.
(although life's too short to drink decaf).
Things that have recently been found to have positive health properties: beer, chocolate, coffee. In moderation of course.
Personally I follow a very simple rule - eat and drink everything, just don't eat or drink too much of any one thing.
There was an interesting study recently - the French (yes, we hate them, yawn) apparently eat lots of stuff that is supposed to be bad for you, and yet remain healthy and slim. How do they do it? Basically, eat in moderation and don't snack between meals.
Everything in one way or another in some sort of situation or in excess is going to make us "die" ... but generally I don't see anyone a shortened life for the sole reason that they drank a cup of decaf every day or normal coffee for that matter.
So, is there anything not bad for you? Now coffee, what next, are they going to find that too much di-hydrogen monoxide will kill you? There comes a point where you just say, "forget it, I'm gonna be happy and die young."
On the other hand, decaf coffee isn't really something worth dying for...
Qxe4
Whoever wrote "So decaffeinated brands usually use a bean that has a more robust flavor," to explain why they use robusta (the cheapest swill, much cheaper than Arabica), probably also says:
"HIV virus"
and my alltime favorite:
"PIN number"
Actually, it is due to the propensity for acronyms (more often, backronyms) to trip up idiots like this guy that I am officially against acronyms.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
In his movie "Sleeper", Miles Monroe is revived from stasis to find that so-called "health foods" were harmful and that all of the bad foods were good for you.
Shame he's rarely funny.
How we know is more important than what we know.
-- Bernard Bernoulli, on attempting to revive Dr. Fred Edison after rescuing him from the IRS.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
looks like americanheart stopped beating..
(which isn't really news, is it now?)
breathing will shorten your lifespan.. also-- eating only vegetables will make you look like a beatnik retard...... hmm... if vegetarians eat only vegetables what do humanitarians eat?... damnit /. always fucks my mind up.
I've always understood that the reason decaffeination removes flavour is that the caffeine tastes bitter. The solution is not to use different beans, but to roast a little darker to restore the strong bitter taste.
My favourite decaf comes from a little boutique that measures it out at the point of sale. Next to their darkest roast coffee, it is clearly even darker still!
I think the reason most decaf is so bad is that you have to get it pre-ground (even at restaurants and cafes) and thus it's stale and the wrong grind anyway, or else it's such a fringe item that it sits around longer on the shelf going stale between roasting batches.
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
You raise up a good point about stale coffee, which also may have some bearing on the study. From the article:
"In this study researchers gave participants a nationally popular home-brewed caffeinated coffee and decaffeinated coffee brand."
Granted, they wanted to do a study researching the health effects of regular versus decaffeinated coffee on the general population, so they went for what most people use, which is probably canned pre-ground. But it's probably a poor reflection of what fresher coffee does. Kind of like comparing the health difference of between boiled or steamed reconstituted dehydrated food.
Plus, drinking all that average coffee is most likely dampening their joie de vivre. I think that little things that brighten your day can have a lot of benefits, health-wise.
I read a newspaper article the other day decrying MacDonalds again - criticising their fruit salads. The article (in the UK Guardian as I remember) said that MacDonalds fruit salads had been bathed in artificial chemicals, and how dare MacDonalds feed such dangerous stuff to our children etc. etc. Reading futher into the article, the chemicals in question were citric acid and ascorbic acid (vitamin C).
Not true!
http://www.webster.com/dictionary/robust
Robust doesn't always have to do with flavor.
It has NOTHING to do with acronyms.
Do you want some cookie with that coffee?
This just in, being born will kill you. A study by like 10 bajillion genius Harvard researchers and shit said that 100% of people who are born, die. Scientists suggest that this is based on genes inherited from victim's parents and are working on a test to detect it.
Decaffeinated -- not caffeinated
thanks for that clarification!
my BMI is way over "reasonable" index, I drink beer, sometimes liquors, normal coffee, a range of foods including these rather unhealthy, don't move too much, yet my blood pressure is perfectly within norm, the "bad cholesterol" detector device displayed LO meaning the levels were undetectably low, I don't have any serious health problems... I wonder why :)
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Interesting that the decaf was only "theoretically harmful" to fatties. To normal or skinny people it has the reverse effect and the level of the naughty chemical dropped.
So maybe if you happen to be normal or skinny, decaf is even better for you than you thought.
Of course we puritanical vegan types aren't dying of a heart attack anyway because we barely eat enough saturated fat to make the cholesterol we need to bind our cells together (yay coconuts and avocadoes: necessary to bind our cells together).
Does anyone else have trouble actually bringing up the article without a bunch of stuff all over the top of it? (Say, in Firefox?)
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
I also try to do everything in moderation. I even moderate in moderation, so I end up doing some stuff to the extreme, just so I won't be an extremist at moderation, also known as an extremist moderationist. Or is that a moderate extremist. I give up, time for another cup of coffee.
The dose makes the poison. Too much of anything is bad for you; too little of some things is bad for you. Strike the right balance and you'll be fine.
Well, right up until old age gets you; let's face it, if there's secret way to become immortal we haven't found it yet. We're all going to die of something, might as well have a little fun in the meantime.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Really, it's true. Salts in the bloodstream or something.
You don't drink decaf for the same reason as you don't eat yellow snow. They're both piss. End of story.
All of these studies are missing the mark. The real cause is birth. 100% of the people who are born will die! Guarenteed!
From Garfield sometime...
John walks into the room, yawning, and picks up a mug of coffee.
Garfield: No, don't do it John!
John takes a sip and promptly collapses, asleep.
Garfield: I warned you! That was decaf...
"Drink decaf and die"? Gee I wonder why Slashdot gets accused of headline sensationalism ...
Like most things in life
The application of "Little & Often" is usally the best approach.
Cynicism was originally the philosophy of a group of ancient Greeks called the Cynics
Proberly more money in caffinated drinks, as coffee "drinkers" always fancy another one.
My doctor keeps telling me to keep off the expressos and Red Bull for my heart's sake. I'll use this to argue back; after all, how can I be an effective techie without my caffeine boosts?!
I beleive Starbucks was one of the first chains to insist on only selling Arabica beans. Its decaf coffees have always been made with Arabica beans. Basically Starbucks was a leading voice in the trade for discouraging the use of Robusta. You may not like Starbucks, but to criticize their large selection of various coffees as being second rate is barking up the wrong tree.
My father has long been of the opinion, based on something that he read somewhere, that decaf coffee is more harmful than regular coffee. Something to do with the decaffeination process introducing harmful chemicals into the brew, or maybe he was just thinking of the process originally used to brew Sanka, I don't know. Either way, this will be just a little bit more validation for him...
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
On a somewhat(?) related note, I have a Gaggia Syncrony Digital coffee maker and it makes wonderful freshly ground coffee with a "crema" on it (it doesn't use paper filters so retains a *LOT* more flavor) but the water and coffee bean containers are too small and I can't use the steamer at the same time as I'm making coffee because the steamer doesn't have a separate heater tank.
Does anyone know of a better coffee maker they can recommend?
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
"DRINK DECAF AND DIE!!"
When the hell did Rupert Murdoch buy Slashdot?!!
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
I hope they won't research my third addiction. I haven't spend years building my porn collection just to hear it's unhealty.
It is a common misconception that darker, stronger coffees have more caffeine. Actually the lightest roast coffees have the most caffeine. In fact espresso roast, pound for pound, has less caffeine than regular coffees. It is only the brewing process that makes the drink more caffeinated than regular coffee. This fact doesn't contradict you're theory, but you might find decaf roasted dark for reasons other than flavour
Once I read that smoking could kill me, then I stopped smoking
Then I read that drinking alcohol is bad, so I stopped drinking
Then I read that too much sex could cause a heart stroke ... so I stop reading !
A study I conducted in private has found that life is a lethal disease. In fact, it has been identified as the leading cause of death in nations around the world. The disease is slowly degenerative, with some individuals surviving for over a hundred years; but eventually, the disease exhausts the body's resources, resulting in organ failure, followed by death. The incubation time of the disease is about 9 months, and it spreads through unprotected sexual intercourse.
Symptoms of the disease vary wildly from individual to individual, but generally include excessive motion, episodes of sadness as well as happiness, aggression, anxiousness, nervosity, and compulsive eating and drinking.
Various drugs have been found to weaken the symptoms of the disease, and some substances can even slow the progress of the disease, but a definite cure has not been found, despite elaborate research. So for now the only remedy is prevention.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The real cause of death doesn't lie in food or beverage. Here's a recent study that explains everything:
"We all know that Heart Disease is the #1 cause of death in the U.S. But think hard about this: In Japan, they've got a diet that is low in fat and they have less heart disease than the US. While in France, the diet is very high in fat, and they also have less heart disease than in the US. In India, almost nobody drinks red wine and the heart disease rate is lower than in the US. But in Spain, everybody drinks too much red wine and sure enough they have less heart disease than the US. Algeria has the lowest sexual activity rate, and they've got less heart disease than in the US. But Brazil has the highest sexual activity rate and sure enough...the heart disease ratio is lower than in the US. His sage wisdom to me? Drink, eat and make merry all you want. It's speaking English that kills you."
There's probably some other variable involved that they didn't account for. For instance, if you drink your coffee with sugar and caffeine helps you metabolize sugar better. Or there's some chemical byproduct of the decaffeination process. Or caffeine increases your heartbeat rate which has cardiovascular benefits. Etc...
Of course, this presumes that LDL is actually bad for you, i.e. the correlation between LDL and heart disease is strong and that those proposing the correlation is significant have actually proven causation as well. There are those who believe otherwise (http://www.thincs.org/). But hey, why buck the multibillion dollar drug industry? They will bury you.
Programmers in mirror are brighter than they appear
To me, drinking decaf coffee is about as appealing as drinking non-alcoholic beer.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
beavis: flavonoids ! ... flavonoids.
butthead: hehehehe
beavis: hehehehe
Nothing is bad in moderation. Or at least worrying about. Drink water most of the time and I doubt you have to worry what the occasional cup of coffee, wine, hard liquor, soda does to you.
I repeat simple common sense - drink water most of the time. It seems nothing else is safe these days. Some weeks it comes out that red wine/coca-cola/coffee is good because of X and then the next week it's bad because of Y.
Above all - don't drink the shit that has 'corn syrup' or 'high fruchtose corn syrup' or whatever 'syrup' in it. It'll just get you diabetes faster. This includes most sweet drinks not diet. Like Starbucks Frappacinos at the next 7-eleven.
I'm serious about water. Up to 50 years ago, most people had water most of the time. It's good for you body and there is nothing for your kidneys/liver has to filter. Now, I know people who wouldn't look at a glass water - much less have one for days on end - instead ingesting endless gallons of soda. I hate to see their health 20 years down the road.
It's probably going to get worse in the future as this generation are accustomed to the friendly coca-cola vending machines besides the non-working water founta in schools these days.
Coffee is bad because it encourages you to consume more calories through milk and sugar, plus it has caffiene and the various crap that goes with it. I think caffeine is more of a addiction - I seen people who never had coffee before turn into caffeine addicts who needed a cup 'to wake up' and then one at lunch and then another at 4pm. I wouldn't care but they actually became cranky if they didn't get their fix.
Not that I don't like a good cappacino at lunch myself. But if common sense prevailed and people didn't have an insatiable want of drinking something more 'tasty' or sugary or exotic or whatever at every turn - I doubt reports of this kind would worry anybody.
*I'd say unsweetended green tea is okay too in mass quantities but then there will be a report out next week:)
Just drink Green Tea and you will live longer.. or not..
In general, they over-roast their beans.
Best Slashdot Co
Small amounts of coffee just do not do the trick. With about 5 cups of coffee in the morning, I am active untill 16:00 in the afternoon. With about 8 cups, I make it till 19:00. Decaf is just for the taste of coffee with the cafeine effect. Drinking coffee just for the taste is pretty useless. I think people like coffee because of the caffeine. For me coffee is certainly an acquired taste, mainly through the way to sweet frapuchinos/frapiatos from Starbucks et al..
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
My theory: If our illustrious evoltionary ancestors weren't eating or drinking it hundreds of thousands and millions of years ago while they were genetically mutating their way toward homo sapiens, then "it" probably isn't good for us. Or, at worst, is actually harmful.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I always advocated pure Java.
Million Dollar Screenshot
When will people learn you wonder. When it comes to substances like caffeiene, alcohol, e.a. its usually not healthy to go "oh, I'm consuming too much. Lets fully stop at once and drink a substitute instead", since its not the substance causing harm; its usually the amount in which its being consumed.
Isn't it a little obvious that if you start gubbling up substitutes in the same amounts those too could cause problems ?
you know you want to.
Yeah, our ancestors were eating their enemies. You are what you eat.
so heinous that only people without the sense to drink freshly ground coffee are susceptible to this travesty
For the best taste you gotta roast your own. Nothing else even comes close.
-1: flamebait should really be -1: inciteful
In other news, beer, especially the dark English varieties, can prevent or inhibit the growth of cancer cells.
;-)
7 30462,00.html
0 5/beerandcancer.htm
Italian coffe and English ale, I knew I had it right from the start!
http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/halsa/story/0,2789,
Apologies about the link, it's in Swedish...
Here's one to the institute that discovered it:
http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/2005/Oct
Ethics is what you say you do. Morals is what you actually do.
Whoever wrote "So decaffeinated brands usually use a bean that has a more robust flavor," to explain why they use robusta (the cheapest swill, much cheaper than Arabica), probably also says:
.... just thinking about someone saying that makes me want to hurt someone.
"HIV virus"
and my alltime favorite:
"PIN number"
Actually, it is due to the propensity for acronyms (more often, backronyms) to trip up idiots like this guy that I am officially against acronyms.
Your on a computer nerd website and you forget "NIC Card"
thank you for giving me a way to justify my insane caffeine addiction. now all i need is that article telling me how cigarettes lower my cholesterol and reduce my chance of heart disease.
...and even if you went vegetarian/vegan, there are "researchers" trying to gain fame by saying that tofu, soy, is bad for you. Can't win. What do we eat? Anyone know?
IN overweight people, decaf drinking was associated with increase of good cholesterol, so they might benefit from decaf. Thin and normal-weight people saw a decrease in good cholesterol, so they might want to avoid decaf.
This is, of course, much more complex than "Drink decaf and die". So it's probably hopeless to try to get the real message across.
Basically, eat in moderation and don't snack between meals.
Any real diet that isn't Atkins or South Beach tells you this. Americans of course can't deal with self-discipline or effort. As with parents and the TV babysitter, we only want a simple solution involving no effort on our part.
German Beer? like Busch or Budweiser? or is it the crap like Becks?
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Buy 3-4 cans of Skoal or other chewing tobacco.
Place contents of cans into a saucepan with enough water to cover
Slowly simmer over a low - medium heat and allow the the tobacco to steep as much as possible. Keep adding water in small quantities to keep the tobacco covered
At this point, start wearing gloves! Pour the contents of the saucepan through a strainer to remove the solids. Put the liquid back in the saucepan and put back on the stove. Reduce heat to minimum setting.
Keep an eye on the pan and continue keeping it on low heat until most of the liquid has evaporated and a syrup begins to form. Don't allow it to get too thick! Remove from heat and add isopropyl alcohol as necessary to keep it liquid.
Just a couple of drops of that in anyone's drink is usually enough to send them to the emergency room with a very rapid heart beat. More than a few drops is usually enough to make sure they don't come home.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
As I've said in my debugging code for years, 0xDECAFBAD
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
-E. W. Dijkstra
Anyone who has played through "Day of the Tentacle" no doubt already knows about the nasty evil powers of decaf coffee.
Starbucks also have a tendency to over-roast their beans which leads to a bit of a burnt flavor on most of their coffees. Do they beat the hell out of freeze-dried store-bought crap? You bet they do. Are they still lacking in quality to save a buck? Yes.
Well, that would explain it... I've tried Starbucks several times because people keep assuring me that it really is good and every time it's acrid and burnt. As for the comparison to store-bought coffee... *shrug* Maybe it's a matter of taste, but I'll take store-bought instant over Starbucks! I like my coffee to not leave with with a horrible taste in my mouth for the next few hours.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
In short, drink caffine, get hypertensive and die...
drink decafinated, get higher cholesterol, and die...
NIC CARD!
f eedId=online-news_rss20
s /2005/10/04/robotic_vacuum_maker_bu_team_up_on_ant isniper_device/
Exactly -- the kid of dumbass who studies coffee (and its effects on the heart), yet makes the statement that "robusta" has a robust flavor, is the type of dumbass to say "NIC Card".
I actually think hackers are more likely to find these mistakes awful; they correspond to type errors in a programming language -- and you can't have those.
The Army just came up with a gun, and they backronymed it into "PHASR" --- you know, like on Star Trek? Get it? Really fucking funny, right? See here: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8275&
Well, here's their acronym:
"Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response" == PHASR,
and the official usage will be something like, "PHASR rifle" -- which makes sense.
PHASR performs the role of a goddamned adjective, even though "phaser", in common use, is a noun.
That's so retarded!
Yet the idiots who named it clearly intended for it to be called "PHASR", not "PHASR rifle", or "PHASR sniper rifle."
So that means that if the jarheads use it semantically correct ("PHASR rifle") they'll sound like idiots saying "NIC card" -- but if they just say something like, "I blasted him with my PHASR!", you'll be thinking, "How did you blast him with your 'stimulation response'?" and then, "well, was that a 'PHASR rifle/pistol/dildo that you blasted him with?" PHASR is just an adjective, right?
There's an increasing trend for this sort of retarded name-i-fyin':
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/article
"REDOWL"? Why not just call it a "FUCKTARD", and come up with a backronym for that?
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Somehow I think you are grossly over-simplifying, or perhaps are simply ignorant.
A majority of people in the East are missing a gene -alcohol dehydrogenase. So basically when they drink the alcohol isn't broken down, and it just keeps running around in their system for a much longer time. Sake s a very popular drink in Japan, but still a huge percentage of the population is missing that gene.
..........FULL STOP.
Since coffee is indiginous to Ethiopia where humans appear to have evolved*, I'm glad that it's such a natural food stuff and totally good for me.
The researchers have clearly made a mistake. Pass the goofballs.
*Humans from Kansas are known not to have evolved.
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
Gee whiz. They'll let just any old nerds in here these days, won't they?
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
I only eat sheep testicles, eggs, and lots of fiber -- nature's broom. So far so good. Oh, and I'm trying to kick my fentanyl habbit, but it makes life so much more pleasant.
you've obviously never tasted tobacco or felt the sting of nicotine in your throat -- much less a crude tobacco concentrate. One sip of that and you'd have a better chance of coughing to death.
Acid-Base chemistry, on the other hand, is simple enough for a 10 year old. Extract the alkaloids from tobacco, drop a lethal dose in a shot of rum. A lethal balm is also very plausable, granted you'd need to apply it while wearing gloves. Friends close, enemies closer. Cheers!
I don't whether to laugh or cry when it comes to so-called "medical research". At least the medical/chemical industrial complex doesn't claim their "studies" are scientific.
The mythology told by "men in white lab coats" almost approaches the mythological tales of King Arthur (anyone watch PBS last night?). There is no scientific proof (using the scientific method) that cholesterol has anything to do with "heart dis-ease".
In fact there are some studies that show there is no relationship! Here's one source that doubts the whole notion http://www.westonaprice.org/moderndiseases/hd.html .
But heart dis-ease has become such a cash cow - almost any mythology will fly. Take the mythology from 500 "studies" that "proves that wine is good for the heart." These 500 "studies" were scrutinized and turns out that wine has nothing to do with avoiding heart disease. People who can afford to drink wine with their meals in restaurants are in the upper middle class income stream and can afford a) medical insurance for treatment b) can afford the $3000 ski trip holiday in the alps etc. c) can afford high quality food - including organic foods and so on.
... then I read decaf. *yawn*
I'm going to go get some (cafinated) coffee.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
I wonder what that really means. Is that 3 8oz. cups? I venture a guess that most coffee cups sitting on
Also from the article, "if you only drink one cup each day, the results of our study probably have little relevance because at that level your daily coffee dose is relatively low,"
Luckily, with my personal cup warmer, my morning cup o' decaf usually lasts about 1/2 a day.
Look at the whole picture, not just the hole in the picture.
You're wrong. (Surprise!) Our genetic structure evolved in an environment that saw our ancestors ingesting chemicals and nutrients from meat, grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, etc. I'm suggesting that ingestion of chemicals and nutirents that were not available to our evolutionary ancestors is liable to get us into trouble.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Have you ever seen coffee beans being roasted, or roasted your own? Coffee beans are decaffeinated while they are green, and they turn a shade of brown in the process. When you roast them they get darker still, darker than normal beans for the same final roasting temperature (as measured by a thermal probe in the roaster). So you could say that a dark looking decaf bean was roasted the same amount as your normal bean, it just looks different.
Another thing about decafs is that they have a lower shelf life than normal beans. But what is this about only getting it preground? All of my local supermarkets have bean dispensers with a few whole bean decafs in stock. They're stale of course, as are all of the beans at the supermarket, but they're decaf.
slightly offtopic, but I know this will interest some of you
being an avid coffee drinker, I was keen to get the freshest, tastiest cup of joe possible.
eventually I moved on to buying green beans, and roasting them myself.
doing comparisons with friends (unknowing test subjects), I found out that my own personal brews had a LOT more caffeine than that of the regular coffeeshop fare.
consequently, I tried to reduce my intake of caffeine by going back to coffeshop coffee, but my withdrawal symptoms have been excruciatingly painful nonetheless.
hopefully the migraines will stop soon
Well, at least Robusta is better than the blend of Chicory root and Molasses, which is what most instant 'coffee' is made from.
Oh well, what the hell...
but being "born again" only causes brain death. ;-)
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Justin, your VULGAR adjectives show a level of ignorance that makes your points moot. Who wants to read what you have to say when you don't have enough control over yourself to make good points without using vulgar language.
Grow up and wash that mouth out with soap!
'confinement' causes cancer in rats! Take a free, roaming, independent rat and shove him into a container, give him meaningless tasks and ... oh wait, that sounds like my job - hmmm.
... oh wait, that sound like my government - hmmm.
... yep, you're right. We're pretty much screwed.
Perhaps if the rats were kept in open, self-governing colonies and were given the 'choice' to cooperate with research studies
Maybe if
I've read a couple of articles about various groups with naturally-decaffeinated coffee plants. One group was doing genetic engineering, and the other had found a wild variety with no caffeine. Both still had some breeding to do to get things to market.
Nonetheless, even though coffee with no caffeine exists, I still don't have any idea why you'd caffeinate it, so your point still stands.
Steamed water?
I know, that's why I put hot in parentheses.
But the fact is, normally you use the steamer to heat the water quickly, so it's, uh, steamed water.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I prefer to make my sandwiches with extra butter and a thick slice of lard, and dip my salami in the warm blood of baby seals. While cutting down a virgin redwood.
"another that drank three to six cups of decaffeinated coffee a day; and a third, the control group, that drank no coffee." ha! maybe they got stressed and developed LDL cholesterol on withdrawal.
I'm sure even people with cholesterol problems can have a cup of decaf every once in awhile and be no worse off.
BTY - You can get whole bean decaf. I use to get it during the brief period of time when I experimented with decaf. It was pretty good decaf, but you did have to use a lot more to get a nice tastey cup of joe. And I wouldn't say it's a fringe item. A lot of people drink decaf.
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
I repeat simple common sense - drink water most of the time. It seems nothing else is safe these days.
I don't know where you get the idea that water is "safe". Hell, here in Ontario, Canada, we had the Walkerton debacle in 2000 wherein people died from E.coli that was circulated through "clean" tap water. And this is in an industrialized nation where we're not supposed to have problems with this kind of crap anymore. God forbid you visit/live in Mexico or Africa or some such where the water quality is worse.
- water can carry harmful bacteria
- artificially created/modified products (such as soda and juice from concentrate) contain chemicals that may kill you
- butter is too high in fat, but margarine contains too many artificial products and can even lead to anal leakage
- sugar is bad for you, but so are artificial sweeteners
- grains are treated with pesticides and other chemicals, and, once processed, are often so robbed of nutrients as to be totally unhealthy
- vegetables are treated with pesticides and other chemicals, and are coated with wax to look pretty on the shelf
- beef can be unsafe due to mad cow disease, and it's also much too fatty
- poultry can be unsafe due to salmonella, and force-fed poultry is often, once again, much too high in fat
- pork is just too high in fat to be healthy, and it also can carry its own share of harmful bacteria
Shall I go on?
I could find links that lead to studies that support all of the previous claims, but anyone who really cares enough can just Google it. What I'm getting at is that nothing is safe. That's why we have an immune system, but it's also why we get sick and die. That's why I've given up on eating "healthy", because nobody can agree on what "healthy" is!
I repeat simple common sense - drink water most of the time. It seems nothing else is safe these days.
I don't know where you get the idea that water is "safe". Hell, here in Ontario, Canada, we had the Walkerton debacle in 2000 wherein people died from E.coli that was circulated through "clean" tap water. And this is in an industrialized nation where we're not supposed to have problems with this kind of crap anymore. God forbid you visit/live in Mexico or Africa or some such where the water quality is worse.
- water can carry harmful bacteria
- artificially created/modified products (such as soda and juice from concentrate) contain chemicals that may kill you
- butter is too high in fat, but margarine contains too many artificial products and can even lead to anal leakage
- sugar is bad for you, but so are artificial sweeteners
- grains are treated with pesticides and other chemicals, and, once processed, are often so robbed of nutrients as to be totally unhealthy
- vegetables are treated with pesticides and other chemicals, and are coated with wax to look pretty on the shelf
- beef can be unsafe due to mad cow disease, and it's also much too fatty
- poultry can be unsafe due to salmonella, and force-fed poultry is often, once again, much too high in fat
- pork is just too high in fat to be healthy, and it also can carry its own share of harmful bacteria
Shall I go on?
I could find links that lead to studies that support all of the previous claims, but anyone who really cares enough can just Google it. What I'm getting at is that nothing is safe. That's why we have an immune system, but it's also why we get sick and die. That's why I've given up on eating "healthy", because nobody can agree on what "healthy" is!
Scientists discover that life is the leading cause of death.
Well, how much caffeine drinks DOES it take to kill you though? Ha! For me it's 100.31 cups of Brewed Coffee.
A few years ago, I ran into my old ninth grade history teacher, a curmudgeon and proud of it, but a great teacher. We chatted for quite a while and got onto the subject of his neighbors, many of whom were college professors that I knew from school. He mentioned Bill Thonson, the prof I had taken a photography class from, and a man I had always liked, had recently died. My old teacher spoke admiringly of Bill and said that he had "died with all of his vices intact." Something to live up to, I think, especially since Bill's list was impressive.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
For your information;
In general, Arabica beans contain less caffeine then Robusta coffeebeans. Most decafeinated coffees are made with Arabica.
Quality of the beans is determined by various factors such as color (before the roast), shape of the beans, taste and hardness; Strictly Hard Bean is an indication of a high quality.
Blessed Be,
Lipton
I buy green coffee beans and roast them myself. But in the case of decaf beans, "green" is a misnomer - they come out of the decaffination process brown already. And when you roast them, they turn out darker than regular beans, even if you roast them to the same degree.
Sean
According to Alton Brown, the reason most decaf is so bad is because it's a lot more expensive to make - the decaffinating process costs money, yet customers aren't willing to pay a dollar more per cup of decaf coffee than caf coffee, so they make up the difference by using really crappy beans.
They also tend to roast them really dark to hide what would otherwise be discolored beans.
It looks like this study avoided the pitfalls of earlier studies -- examing free-living populations.
There was a study performed by Harvard Medical that reached the same conclusions. The problem is, the subjects were all medical students and doctors (ie those who already had poor health were aware of a supposed link between caffeine and bad health). Thus, those had a propensity for certain diseases and health problems avoided caffeine, and instead drank decaf. The problem is, they had a propensity to poor health already, so the study showed that decaf "caused" poor health.
My probability professor used to bitch about studies like that. It looks like this one avoided those problems. Good for them.
By Mangie Kerr
DULLAS (Rooters Health) - Drinking water may raise the risk of boneitis more than Diet A&W Root Beer does, Flatlanda investigators announced at the Bonitis Organization Internation Networking Group (BOING) conference currently meeting here.
Dr. Chuck N. Little and Dr. Fred D. Katt of the Wounded Knee Medical Center analyzed the effects of fluid consumption on bone density in 193.5 subjects enrolled in a clinical trial known as the Root Beer Float.
The subjects were randomly assigned to one of three groups: water drinkers, Diet A&W Root Beer drinkers, and those who drank straight gin. Each drank three to six cups of fluid per day for a period of two weeks.
At the end of the study, there were no significant differences among those who drank Diet A&W Root Beer. The gin drinkers were demanding olives and vermouth. But the water drinkers showed a significant but undisclosed difference in bone density. Whether this difference is statistically meaningful is also undisclosed so that nothing can distract from the alarming warning of the menace of boneitis.
"This is terribly important," said Dr. Katt, who went on to emphasize the pressing need to approve his grant proposals for more study of this critical public health threat.
The Coffee and Lipoprotein Metabolism (CALM) study included 187 people, randomized to three groups: one that drank three to six cups of caffeinated coffee a day; another that drank three to six cups of decaffeinated coffee a day; and a third, the control group, that drank no coffee.
Although there are people who do drink 3-6 cups of day, would normal 1 cup a day drinker be affected?
"Caffeinated and decaffeinated coffees are often made from different species of beans. Caffeinated coffee, by and large, comes from a bean species called coffee Arabica, while many decaffeinated coffees are made from coffee Robusta. The decaffeination process can extract flavonoids and ingredients that give coffee flavor. So decaffeinated brands usually use a bean that has a more robust flavor."
As someone who has worked in the coffee industry and has worked with the decaffeination process, this is a generalization that is not always true. Caffeinated coffee comes from many different beans. Arabica and Robusta are just of the most common. I would say that majority of caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee comes from Robusta because it is a cheaper bean. The common coffees (Folger's, Maxwell House, etc) that you would get in a normal restaraunt (MacDonald's, KFC, etc) and at the supermarket are often Robusta. Higher grade coffee is made from Arabica. Because it is more expensive, often it is not decaffeinated because those willing to pay more for coffee want it caffeinated.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Caffeine, which is found in coffee and other foods (cocoa, tea), is that substance that keeps us awake, both when we need it and when we don't want it. Unfortunately, to some people this and other side effects of caffeine are not welcome.
Decaffeinated coffee or "decaf" is coffee that has had most of the caffeine removed. By weight, the amount of caffeine found naturally in coffee is only about 1% for the Arabica and 2% for the Robusta coffee beans.
When you read "97% Caffeine Free", 97% of that 1% or 2% has been removed.
There are currently two methods used commercially that remove caffeine from coffee:
European Process Swiss Water Process
European Process
Most decaf coffees are made using a chemical process first used in Europe. This process involves soaking the beans in water and then "washing" them in methylene chloride to absorb the caffeine from the bean. After this, the beans are rinsed clean of the chemicals, dried and shipped to the coffee roasters. The advantage of this method is that it provides decaf coffee with more flavor than the Swiss water processing. Although there is virtually no trace of any chemicals left in the bean after roasting, some people are uncomfortable knowing that the coffee they are drinking was chemically processed.
Swiss Water Process
The second method is known as "Swiss water processing". This process uses no chemicals, but rather hot water and steam to remove the caffeine from the coffee. The "life" of the bean is taken into the water, and then the water solution put through activated charcoal filters to remove the caffeine. Once the caffeine is removed, these same beans are then put back into the decaffeinated solution to re-absorb everything except the caffeine. The beans are then dried and shipped to the roasters. The disadvantage is that the water processing removes more than just the caffeine. Some of the oils from the coffee bean are removed as well, making it less flavorful.
b) If modern technology and modern medicine is so bad and evil and god knows what else, please explain to me why life expectancy in Humans today is about 30-40% more than 100 years ago. Its about living better for a longer time, or what am I missing?
Nothing has done more for human longevity than modern sanitation. Nothing has done more to make people healthy than not having to walk through shit flowing in the street.
My grandfather's side was especially long-lived - his parents and grandparents regularly lived into their 90's and 100's. (Grandpa _might_ make it to 90, but he's just hanging on by a thread...) But they lived on a farm, or in a rural setting, where there wasn't a concentration of bodies generating copious amounts of shit. Sewer system technology is only about a hundred years old, making city dwelling a healthier choice for the past 100 years.
People thrive despite technological medicine, not 'because of'.
YOU'RE INTELLIGENT.
That is possibly the scariest news headline I have ever read. The worst one I have ever seen is 133 Dead As Delta Cancels Flight in Midair.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
Decaf coffee is in general bad because it's expensive to process. If you use the same high-quality beans as you'd use for caffeinated coffee, the added cost of time and equipment would drive the price of a cup of decaf higher than the price of a cup of regular. That's bad for business -- most people probably wouldn't pay extra for a cup of decaf. So the processors use cheap, lower-quality beans for decaf, and the final price ends up closer to the price of regular coffee.
Marijuana...check Ephedra...check Tobacco...in progress Caffeine...next in line We continue the march of using "what if's," "maybe's," and "sometime's," to villify and then ban substances that when used in moderation and properly offer about the same risk of harm as driving a car or walking down the street. Probably even less so. Oh well, you have to find something for lobbiests, politicians and fringe scientists to work on.
I always said decaf coffee was an abomination. Now we have evidence to back it up!
Caffeinated Chocolade Beer - Yea !
..."99% of non-smokers die".
It's part of their plan to segue into hardcore pornography. I mean, how else do we wind up with shows like "Desperate Housewives" on network TV? :)
Are we talking about cheap instant decaf coffee or a decaf latte made with real beans in a cafe?
Sheesh. I read about this over at the BBC. That artcle, at least, made it clear that the concern was like the mildest of concerns. I mean we're talking one study makes one link between decaf coffee and some cholesterol levels and maybe one other thing. That's it. Big whoop. And even then, it only affected people that drank, I think, six or more cups a day.
So now everyone here is making fun of this slashdot article, and rightly so. This is what we call *sensationalism*. But hey it works, you clicked on the link right? Just as "the revolution will not be televised" I suspect much of the *real* news may not have splashy headlines or catchy theme music.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
If you're using $10/pound coffee, $11/pound decaf isn't going to increase the cost of a cup significantly, especially because the places that use it are typically charging $1.50-$2/cup for the atmosphere and the extra 2 cents cost of materials doesn't matter. If you're using $3/pound coffee, and making it weaker, the difference is under a penny, which doesn't matter unless you're dealing with McDonald's kinds of volume.
The reason decaf coffee at non-coffee-centric restaurants tastes so nasty is that the restaurant starts with cheap beans (which does seem to make more difference for decaf) and leaves the pot sitting on the burner for longer because there's usually not as much demand for decaf as regular, after leaving the preground decaf sitting unrefrigerated in the can for longer than the regular to make sure it went stale first. So the regular is fresh cheap boring weak coffee, while the decaf is old stale burned cheap boring weak coffee.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Robusta coffees used to be popular for this, partly because they're cheap and used to be the main caffeine coffees sold as well, and partly because they have more caffeine that can be used for the soda market, and partly because the early methods took out more flavor than the current methods.
Decaf beans are really common, though - most of the places I buy cups of coffee either grind their own decaf and regular from beans or else get them both preground in big bags. Occasionally I'll be at a small espresso place that has one grinder for the regular and gets the decaf ground out of a can, but it's not that common.
At least most US airlines these days brew their decaf as well as regular. I remember the days of powdered Sanka all too well.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I prefer Peet's, where the coffees are usually *more* bitter than Starbucks, but both of them do brew a fairly strong dark coffee for their main market. Unfortunately neither of them does an East African decaf - I've found one local coffee place that roasts an Ethiopian decaf, and does surprisingly well given the damage decaffeinating does to milder coffees.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Sacramento California is about 2 hours east of San Francisco, and I occasionally had projects there either with the state government or more often with companies that had data centers there (it's outside the earthquake zone). For a number of years there seemed to be a conspiracy never to sell any coffee strong enough to wake up a government bureaucrat. The weakest of all was at the cafeteria in the office building where the state telecom bureaucrats worked - I'd guess it had less than half as much coffee per cup of light brown water as MacDonalds. There was one Lebanese restaurant that made espresso, but that was about it. Eventually Starbucks moved in, and if you went to the suburbs where the computer companies were, it became possible to get coffee.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
But we've always had good coffee here in SF, and back when I lived in New Jersey there were enough Italians around that you could find espresso in almost any town, though average coffee wasn't that good.
Out in the MidWest and most of Flyover Country, Starbucks saved the locals from drinking tasteless brown water. They were a wonderful thing. Sure, there are exceptional areas, like New Orleans, and you'd get better coffee up north than down south, partly because of the weather, and partly because of cultural differences (Lutheran churches generally have better coffee than Methodists, who make much better coffee than Baptists :-) But before Starbucks, MacDonalds was the standard for dependable coffee in most of the US - anywhere else was likely to be even worse.
Los Angeles was another special case, in the bad direction. Instead of Midwestern wimpy brown water, it was Mexican-style coffee made with LA's bad-tasting water, so it was really atrocious. I've had similar coffee in Mexico, where they use darker roasted coffee than average boring US coffee but make it weaker, so it's about the same strength, kind of like making Americano except a lot weaker, but there's something about the flavor of LA's not-very-drinkable tap water that interacts badly with that style coffee. Blah! Starbucks was a real improvement when they started taking over LA and the Valley.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
IIRC (from what I've read), if you use sunscreen, it will prevent most skin cancer, but also raise your risk of getting much more lethal cancers, like colon or lung. I think I'd rather have the odd skin cancer cut out, personally.
Alcohol dehydrogenase is an enzyme, not a gene. And a related bit of trivia: Do you know what the antidote for methanol ingestion is? Good old ethanol! See the wiki and scroll down to see why.
Look up the history of seafaring (specifically European seafaring). You could boil water and put it in a cask for a long journey, and it might still go bad from what was in the cask. If it had alcohol in it, it prevented re-contamination during storage.
Many European naval experts felt that a drinking water-based (as opposed to grog or rum) naval fleet was so difficult to maintain as to be impractical. Losses from water-borne illness would be very large.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Jordan's version of Turkish coffee is a bit different from the Greek or Turkish stuff, just as most of the common Middle Eastern cuisine varies a bit from place to place, but it's pretty similar. But you're wrong about "Americano" being a joke - to us, it's not "the stupid way stupid Americans like their coffee watered down from the way normal people drink it", it's "coffee made the strength Americans like it at home, with enough water in it that you can drink a whole cup of hot liquid, instead of drinking an octuple-espresso which is what you'd get if you asked the Italians/French to make you 250ml of coffee." Yeah, ok, it's watered down, but it's no more diluted than drinking a latte - it's just diluted with water instead of milk.
**Yes, I was with tourists; my wife knew the guy leading the group, who'd been travelling to the Middle East on various business for about 60 years, and we wanted to go there with him while he was still in reasonable health, so there was us, a 40-year-old guy, and a bunch of old people who prefered powdered nescafe. Got to see all kinds of cool places in Jordan and Egypt as well as the usual modern tourist traps and the usual 4th-century pilgramage tourist traps.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I found the results surprising and annoying - I drink lots of (good arabica) decaf because I like coffee but don't like being caffeinated all the time, have high blood pressure, normal-to-low LDLs, and low HDLs. I didn't expect coffee to be affecting my cholesterol, but having them tell me I ought to start drinking lots of caffeine to improve my heart risks is really _not_ what I want to hear :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
this just in, depressed teens healthier than ever, they regularly cut themselves.....
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
I'm all intrigued. Tell us about your morning coffee ritual. I love Slashdot threads that involve coffee because I'm always in awe of the real "out there" coffee drinkers.
Seriously. I'd love to hear what you do. Part voyeurism, part looking for tips to improve my own humble brew.
Aegilops
I try to treat all people with a certain amount of respect. Is there something special about people who sell food? My experience of places like McDonald's is the service is pretty obnoxious so those people get less respect from me than average. On the other hand people who do a great job of serving me in a restaurant will get more respect. I don't see anything special about food.
Which may or may not be a possibility. Between low level radioactive particles being passed into the air from coal fired power plants, through automotive exhausts (which contain roughly the same amount of toxins as cigarette smoke), and even pollutants blown over the Pacific from China.
For all we know, smoking could either be a scapegoat or at the very least, be improving some people's tolerance for said dangerous materials in the air.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
There isn't anything special about food. The reason I mentioned it was that someone was belittling the idea of giving a food service job a name that had some implicit cachet - barista instead of coffee server. I think it's cool that Starbucks is treating their employees as if what they do is cool, not ordinary.
Pulling espressos is about 50% the job itself, and 50% interaction with the customer. If you just wanted an espresso, you'd buy a machine - if you get an espresso drink every day, you could pay for the quite expensive equipment required to make your own espresso in about a year, so there's no reason to ever go to *$$ or your local family-owned coffee shop unless you want something more than just an espresso drink.
So the 50% of the job that's not pulling the espresso is, essentially, being somebody that your customers want to see on a regular basis. And if you are the customer, then your job, should you choose to accept it, is turning the person behind the counter into someone you want to see every day. If you don't want that job, brew your own coffee.
Anyway, the point is that when you say "so those people get less respect from me" you are saying that you have abdicated your power to decide to be who you want to be to the other person; if they act toward you the way you want people to act toward you, then you will act back in kind, and if they don't, you won't either. Why not take the power into your own hands, and just be nice to everybody, regardless of how they treat you?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=2511595&dopt=Abstract /
= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=8986205 &query_hl=3/
and
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd
http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/127/5/376/
This is a fairly well known fact. To absolutely corect would have been better to say that some Asians often have a copy of the ADH gene that doesn't function (essentially),as compared to ethnic caucasians. There are some racial differences in drug metabolism. See also G6P metabolism in people of Afican and mediterrainian descent - certain drugs used to prevent malaria caused a hemolytic anemia (red cells burst).
..........FULL STOP.
instant folgers and other such "coffee" substitutes are made from beans which have been over-roasted, improperly ground, and added to water that isn't an appropriate temperature, then it's rapidly freeze-dried to produce the "instant" granules.
you tell me.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!