What is the best way to drink coffee? Learn about coffee knowledge to drink coffee healthier!

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In the busy life, starting the morning with a cup of fragrant coffee has become the most readily available way for modern people to refresh themselves. In addition, more and more studies have shown that drinking coffee in moderation has more benefits than disadvantages on the body. Not only can the chlorogenic acid contained in coffee beans prevent fat accumulation and reduce the chance of obesity, it can also prevent cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, and even help secrete dopamine and prevent Alzheimer's disease, making it difficult for modern people to resist the charm of coffee.

Some people are obsessed with the rich aroma of coffee and love to drink it, but they are also worried that drinking coffee will make them unable to sleep or cause palpitations. How should we drink coffee to get its benefits? Can drinking lightly roasted coffee beans help lose weight? Is coffee with a slightly sour taste better? Today, let me tell you how to choose and brew a good cup of coffee?

Q1. For people who suffer from palpitations and insomnia after drinking coffee, is it best to drink Arabica coffee?

Yes, but some coffees are made from a mixture of different coffee beans. You need to know how to read the ingredients on the label to avoid excessive caffeine intake! Palpitations or insomnia after drinking coffee are caused by excessive caffeine. There are three ways to avoid palpitations or insomnia.

Method 1: Choose a coffee bean variety with a lower caffeine content. For example, the caffeine content of Arabica coffee beans is about 0.8~1.4%, which is lower than the caffeine content of Robusta coffee beans, another variety commonly used for instant coffee or commercial coffee (the caffeine content of Robusta coffee beans is about 1.7~4%, which is about twice as much as that of Arabica coffee beans).

Method 2: Pick out the coffee beans that have turned black, been damaged by mold or fungi, or are unripe and defective. This will not only reduce the caffeine content, but also reduce the intake of harmful ingredients.

Method 3: Reduce the amount of coffee you drink every day. Experts recommend that adults should consume less than 300 mg of caffeine per day. For example, a medium cup of latte coffee sold in a chain coffee shop contains about 101-200 mg of caffeine. If you drink more than 2 cups a day, you may exceed the limit.

A study in the United States found that only about 200 mg of caffeine is needed to enhance short-term memory and help people recite or remember things. Therefore, coffee does not need to be guzzled. Drinking it in moderation is beneficial to health.

In addition, it is also important to "choose the right time to drink coffee". Some people are used to drinking a cup of coffee to wake up in the morning. On an empty stomach, the caffeine in coffee is more likely to irritate the stomach and intestines, causing gastrointestinal discomfort or acid reflux. In order not to irritate the stomach and intestines, and not to reduce the absorption of iron due to drinking coffee, it is recommended to drink coffee 30 minutes after a meal.

Q2. Is coffee best enjoyed when it is scalding hot?

Wrong! Good quality coffee has the richest flavor when it is not hot. It is recommended to cool the coffee slightly after it is brewed and wait until the temperature drops to about 60 degrees before drinking it. When you sip it at this time, except for the reduced aroma, the taste will be better than hot coffee. You can taste the fruity aroma of the coffee, and you can also feel whether the taste is smooth and whether the aftertaste is sweet and layered. If you drink warm coffee and find that it is too bitter, burnt, rancid, or oily, it means that the coffee beans are over-roasted or have deteriorated. It is best not to drink it.

In addition, there are rumors on the Internet that using bone china cups to brew coffee can keep the heat better, making the coffee more fragrant and delicious. Is it really so magical? In fact, in theory, bone china cups have nothing to do with taste except that they are beautiful and thin. Take the purple clay teapot, which is currently recognized to enhance the aroma of tea, as an example. The purple clay teapot can absorb tea soup due to its special double-pore structure, causing the body to change and emit the light smell of the brewed tea. Therefore, it is reasonable for tea lovers to say that "keeping the pot" can make the tea taste more fragrant, but pots or cups made of glass, porcelain, stainless steel and other materials have dense and airtight surface textures, so it should be difficult to absorb the aroma of tea or coffee. Using bone china cups to brew coffee is at best beautiful and delicate, and the heat preservation effect may be better.

Q3. Does drinking lightly roasted coffee beans help with weight loss and bring out the coffee flavor better?

Yes! The saying that drinking coffee can help you lose weight refers to black coffee without sugar or milk, because the chlorogenic acid contained in coffee beans can prevent fat accumulation and reduce the chance of obesity. The amount of chlorogenic acid in coffee varies depending on the degree of roasting of the coffee beans. Generally, lightly roasted coffee contains more chlorogenic acid than heavily roasted coffee. If you want to lose weight by drinking coffee, you can choose coffee beans with a lower degree of roasting.

However, it should be reminded that it is best to drink black coffee in moderation. If you drink too much unsweetened black coffee, the caffeine it contains will accelerate metabolism. If you do not consume a balanced diet in order to lose weight, when the body accelerates metabolism and consumes calories, blood sugar will decrease, which may cause a feeling of cold and hunger, causing you to want to eat more high-calorie foods, ruining your weight loss plan.

Regarding the roasting degree of coffee beans, they can usually be divided into 8 different degrees of roasting, such as light, medium, and dark. A good cup of coffee must be able to present the unique "regional flavor" of the coffee beans from different producing areas, so light roasting must be adopted, that is, the roasting degree can only be "between light roasting and medium roasting" to retain and present the original "floral, fruity, herbal flavor" and "nutty, caramel, chocolate flavor" of the coffee beans. Beautiful and rich aroma and taste.

If the coffee beans are of low quality or are mixed with too many spoiled, moldy or defective coffee beans, they often need to be roasted to a "medium to heavy degree or above" to suppress their bad odors and tastes such as sourness, earthy smell and moldy smell. Therefore, drinking light to medium roasted coffee can better taste the original flavor of the coffee and the good ingredients in the coffee than drinking heavy roasted coffee.

In addition to drinking black coffee, drinking bulletproof coffee is also a very popular weight loss method recently. It claims that as long as coconut oil and cream are added to freshly brewed coffee to replace sugar (carbohydrates), the body can only burn fat in the absence of sugar. Because fat is the slowest digested nutrient, drinking bulletproof coffee is easy to make people feel full, so people eat less at noon, which has the effect of losing weight. But in fact, using bulletproof coffee to lose weight, the increase in ketone bodies in the early stage will suppress appetite and cause mild dehydration. Therefore, the initial weight loss is rapid, but it is not suitable for patients with liver and kidney diseases, type 1 diabetes, and late-stage type 2 diabetes. Otherwise, it may increase the chance of ketoacidosis and cause life-threatening. In addition, long-term consumption of bulletproof coffee may also increase the risk of osteoporosis.

Q4. Is coffee that tastes slightly sour better?

In principle, it is correct, but please note that the sour taste must be "smooth and mild fruity sour taste", not the pungent and rancid taste! Green coffee beans are the seeds of coffee fruits, which have the sweet and sour taste of fruit. When green coffee beans are roasted by coffee roasters into ripe beans, the sour taste will be reduced due to roasting. However, good quality roasted coffee beans, after grinding and brewing, will still have a sweet and sour fruity aroma and a mellow taste.

In addition to the natural fruit acid contained in coffee beans, which may make coffee taste slightly sour, many coffee shops have launched Sicilian coffee in recent years. The refreshing lemon is paired with the fragrant black coffee, and the special flavor of sour and bitter has attracted many enthusiasts to try it. However, many coffee shops sell Sicilian coffee with pre-seasoned lemon ice or lemon syrup instead of natural lemon juice. Not only does it not have a weight loss effect, but it may make you fatter due to excessive sugar intake.

Q5. Is it best not to drink coffee that has a bitter or rotten wood taste?

Yes! Coffee beans can easily go bad and become defective beans if you are not careful during the long production process, from cultivation, irrigation, picking to peeling, fermentation, drying, shelling, transportation and storage. According to statistics from the International Coffee Organization (ICO), there are about 1.5 million metric tons of defective beans in the world each year. Producing countries may consume them themselves or package them into low-priced formula beans to make mixed coffee beans or resell them to instant coffee factories at a low price to make three-in-one coffee, etc. These defective beans may have turned black, over-fermented, moldy, worm-eaten, withered, cracked, etc. If they are not selected and filtered out, after grinding and brewing, the coffee will produce rotten fruit flavors, bleach flavors, rancid flavors, earthy flavors, rotten wood flavors, and mixed bitter flavors, and may contain biological toxins that are harmful to health.

My advice to everyone is to buy coffee beans that have a visible original shape, and choose a reputable manufacturer that can help you pick out defective beans, so as to ensure the quality of the coffee beans and avoid a cup of good coffee ruined by defective beans that have been corroded by mold and fungi. When buying, you should also pay attention to whether the coffee beans' factory, variety, flavor, processing method and roasting time are clearly marked on the coffee packaging bag to ensure that you buy fresh coffee beans.