Instant coffee, what exactly are we drinking?

As a child who was fed strong tea by my irresponsible father, I had already developed an antibody to tea when I was in junior high school. No matter how much I drank, I couldn't get rid of my sleepiness. Later, I used tea leaves as chewing gum to clean my mouth every day.

So when I was in urgent need of another drink to save my sleepiness, instant coffee appeared. A large amount of caffeine really kept me away from fatigue when preparing for the exam.

Later, I went to college and had more time to hang out in coffee shops. I didn’t touch instant coffee for a long time, until one day I bought a bag of Nestle 2+1 on a whim…

After it was made, the whole company was awkwardly filled with a magical smell of sesame oil. Yes, it was the smell of sesame oil.

When I found that most netizens were complaining about Nestlé’s “down-to-earth” approach, I knew that once the last line of defense, the smell, was breached, everyone would soon realize that real coffee and instant coffee were two completely different things.

So-called fresh coffee is made by grinding roasted coffee beans into powder, and then injecting hot water to filter out the water-soluble part into coffee . More complicated ones will circulate the hot water multiple times or pressurize it to extract the insoluble part.

In addition to the different varieties of coffee beans and the degree of roasting, the coffee aroma stimulated by hot water also becomes an indispensable part.

Instant coffee is made by extracting the soluble substances from coffee beans in a factory, drying them and making them into granules. When drinking, it is brewed directly with hot water. And due to the advancement of industrial technology, instant coffee often contains more caffeine.

However, standardized manufacturing methods will mostly sacrifice flavor, so the differences caused by region, cooking methods, raw materials, and degree of baking are not so obvious.

Sometimes, even when it comes to choosing beans, the manufacturer’s philosophy is often: as long as it works, it’s fine.

Trans fats added from milk?

The earliest reasons why people added milk to coffee were nothing more than a few: to make it look good (to make latte art), to keep it warm, and to increase flavor. But no one expected that this practice would continue for hundreds of years.

However, in order to ensure a taste more similar to fresh coffee, Nestlé, a giant in the instant coffee industry, developed a powder with casein as the main ingredient, and it has a nice name - coffee companion .

Coffee mate is also affectionately called "creamer" by us. It plays a big role in improving the taste and giving the product a milky feel. The ingredients list says that the first ingredient is glucose syrup, which is a mixture produced by the hydrolysis of starch with a slightly sweet taste and can make the solution thicker.

In fact, the sweetness of instant coffee is far beyond that of freshly ground coffee, which mostly has a distinct sour and bitter taste. The reason is simple: such a low price should be accompanied by a taste and flavor that is acceptable to the public, and sweeter coffee is always more popular than bitter coffee, and sometimes it can even cover up the defects of low-quality coffee beans .

But truly great coffee will not compromise to satisfy the masses.

The second ingredient is hydrogenated vegetable oil and casein. Although vegetable oil is cheap, its stability is too low to be used. Hydrogenated vegetable oil is a semi-solid oil formed by artificial catalytic hydrogenation of vegetable oil, which is just conducive to the production of creamer. Therefore, it was widely used for a time, and the name "non-dairy creamer" also came from this.

But scientific research shows that hydrogenated oil contains more trans unsaturated fatty acids. These trans fatty acids are not good for the human body. They can induce vascular sclerosis and increase the risk of heart disease and cerebrovascular accidents .

When revising the structure of the food pyramid, the United States has clearly stated that it will pay attention to the issue of trans fatty acids and requires manufacturers to indicate the content of trans fatty acids in their products .

On June 16, 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it would completely ban the use of artificial trans fats in food within three years to help reduce the incidence of heart disease. In China, however, the Ministry of Health stipulates that products with less than 0.3% trans fatty acids can be labeled as "zero." The reason for this is intriguing.

In addition, stabilizers, emulsifiers, anti-caking agents, and edible flavors follow closely behind, playing a great role in preventing the powder from being difficult to dissolve and increasing the aroma of instant coffee.

Therefore, compared to the pure sweetness and bitterness, the beautiful latte art and coffee aroma in a coffee shop, the cup of instant coffee in our hands is more like a cup of coffee without "coffee" with the help of science.

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