Here Comes The Coffee Book That'll Perk You Up!

Wake Up To The Amazing Perks Of Coffee!  Your Coffee Book is Ready!

It's the beverage we can't live without--yet few consume it without some guilt.

Java facts you didn’t know...

• According to legend, an Ethiopian goat herder was the first to discover the energizing benefits of the coffee bean plant centuries ago.
• Drinking freshly ground coffee from whole beans can help lower the risk of heart disease, cancer (including breast, prostate and skin), cirrhosis, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease!
• Coffee is the number #1 source of antioxidants in the U.S. diet.
• Two antioxidants key to coffee's health buzz are chlorogenic acid and caffeic acid; and coffee boasts more antioxidants than cocoa and tea!
• Coffee can relieve a host of ailments, including asthma, dental woes, gallstones, headaches, short term memory loss, muscle pain, as well as help you slim down and shape up!

Percolating with information about the world’s favorite “new” health food, as well as interviews with medical doctors, researchers, and coffee roasters, this intriguing book (with a jolt of past and present coffee culture) reveals coffee types and blends, and flavored varieties (both regular and decaf), like chocolate, fruits, nuts, and spices. Discover why this potent elixir has gone from vice to virtue and how to incorporate coffee in Mediterranean-style, healthful recipes like Cappuccino Biscotti, Thai Coffee Spice Chicken Sates, Coffee Cheesecake and Maple Espresso Pudding (plus DIY espresso drinks). Also included are more than 50 home cures that fight seasonal affective disorder to fatigue, plus beauty and anti-aging treatments, and eco-friendly household uses—all made with coffee’s magical beans!

Foreword
In writing the Foreword to The Healing Powers of Coffee, I am confronted by the delicious ubiquity of this most friendly of drinks. For hundreds of years, coffee has started our day, ended our meals, and served as nucleation for budding conversations in cafés around the globe. And today, its recent retail explosion penetrates our cultural awareness to a degree that we have not seen previously in our lifetimes.
What a perfect time for this book! What a perfect time to take a fresh look at the eye-opening health properties of coffee. There are some myths to overcome, new data to consider, and an even stronger array of reasons to wrap two hands around this beverage and make it part of your daily routine.

COFFEE, THE TIMELESS
Coffee has become that anchor of sanity that brings in the morning for over 150 million Americans every day. And even though it has morphed over time from a “cup of joe” steaming from the curved ceramic mug of the local diner to a specialty drink made from specialty cafes, the essence of coffee’s ritual comfort remains. For our parents and their parents, this delicious drink has been a red thread of cultural continuity across time.
Even today, coffee remains woven so completely into the folds of our everyday experience that it carries the comfortable feeling of your favorite jeans that bring recurrent pleasure with each new wearing. At my own house, for example, we have “couch time” every morning, where our own ritual has me making the coffee at 6:00 A.M. My wife and I share that drink together on the couch for 20 minutes every single morning, before wading into the Class-5 rapids of another day. Like millions of other experiences—all similar but different—our daily coffee couch time conversation becomes a continuity of our enduring relationship with coffee.

COFFEE, OUR RITUAL BEVERAGE
While living in France for two years, doing research on the brain, I went through the wonderful routine of eating lunch every day. There are many misconceptions about the relaxed pace of eating in this part of the world. For example, although it’s true that their lunch period is actually more of a lunch epoch, lingering on until about 2:30 every day, they are not eating the entire time. It actually takes them about 40 minutes or so to finish their meal.
This is where ritual comes in. After every lunch, we would amble off to “finish” the meal with a little espresso. The point wasn’t to bring a lidded, big-gulp bucket of what is essentially a caffeine delivery device back to your desk, but to sit with your friends and talk over this lovely beverage. Within this daily ritual, coffee is a product but, more important, a process of communicating with people.

COFFEE, THE HEALTH DRINK
The Mediterranean people have one of the healthiest diets on earth, and they drink coffee every day. It’s funny, though, because when I suggest to people that we should follow suit and add a cup of coffee to our lives, I’m often met with shrieks of protest or dismay. People with those concerns, however, need to “wake up and smell the coffee,” because the most recent data confirms what you see in healthy cultures around the planet: Our favorite common morning eye-opener is extremely good for you.
I know, I know. Coffee was associated with cancer some 60 years ago, but according to newer massive studies, coffee consumption is associated with decreased risk of cancer (colon, breast, and prostate). So, if you’re concerned about the kinds of foods you need to eat in order to prevent the development of those cancers, you may just want to sit down, have a cup of coffee, and mull it over.
While you’re thinking over the internal organs you’re protecting with your java jolt, keep in mind that you’re also doing your brain a favor. Coffee consumption also improves cognitive function, so you think better. And at the risk of sounding like a late-night infomercial (But Wait There’s More!), it is also associated with a reduced risk of Parkinson’s as well as Alzheimer’s disease. So don’t forget to take your coffee in the morning or you may start forgetting to take your coffee in the morning.

COFFEE, TO LOVE
All those incredible health properties of coffee are available when you have it in control. If you have a couple or three cups per day, you get all that brain boosting and cancer prevention. But coffee is like any other food: If a little is healthy for you, a bucket is awful. In other words, the health or ill health of this drink is about not only the coffee itself but also whether you use it or abuse it.
How much is enough/too much? If you need a rule, try this: Love your coffee. Just remember that love is not the same thing as con- sumption—whether for your food or your drink or anything in your life. The only way to really love your coffee, and get the maximum health benefits from this wonderful drink, is to taste it. Enjoy it. Focus on the flavor, and trade in high-quantity for high-quality consumption. Crazy, right?
It turns out that if you love your coffee in this way, you end up developing a taste for it without needing the sugars or other additives. Even better, when you actually love your coffee and take time with it, you end up controlling consumption through your better behavior. That way, you get to enjoy all the wonderful benefits that Cal Orey’s The Healing Powers of Coffee reveals, every day.
—Will Clower, Ph.D., author of The Fat Fallacy: Applying the French Diet to the American Lifestyle and The French Don’t Diet Plan: 10 Simple Steps to Stay Thin for Life