What exactly is instant coffee? You will be surprised after reading this...

Source: Wu Bing, FFCOCO

More and more friends like to drink freshly ground coffee, and those who drink instant coffee are the main force.

Friends often ask me, which instant drink tastes better? Will I be looked down upon if I drink instant drink? Will I be in trouble if I drink expired instant drink?

If you go shopping in a supermarket, you will easily find that there are many types of instant coffee, including milk flavor, Hainan coconut flavor, espresso, Colombian, Brazilian, as well as men's coffee, women's coffee, and Blue Mountain coffee.

Is instant coffee really coffee? Can I drink it?

Instant is not coffee

It is a widely accepted view in the traditional coffee industry that "instant coffee" cannot be considered coffee.

Coffee, like Chinese tea, is a part of a plant that is picked and roasted manually, then filtered or brewed with boiling water to make a delicious, nutritious, and healthy drink.

What about instant drinks? You can search on Baidu. From the production process of instant drinks, it is a completely artificial drink synthesized from chemical substances. It contains various chemical substances that are harmful to the human body.

Originally, we just want to drink a cup of coffee to refresh ourselves. Even if it is not a very exquisite and delicious specialty coffee, it will not cause any harm to the body as long as we do not drink too much. But what about the impact of instant coffee on human health? I have collected and sorted out some information about instant coffee for you to learn about.

Instant coffee production

Since instant coffee is usually just the caffeine extracted from coffee beans, most coffee producers choose Robusta coffee beans, which are of poor quality, high yield and low price, in order to reduce costs. This type of coffee beans is mostly produced in Vietnam, Hainan, Yunnan, China, Africa and other countries.

Instant coffee is produced by extracting effective ingredients from Robusta coffee beans used as industrial raw materials and then drying them. In this process, some aromatic substances will inevitably be lost, making the flavor and taste of the finished product not as rich and pure as directly roasted and ground coffee.

The production process is generally: pretreatment → roasting → grinding → extraction → concentration → drying

Pretreatment is to remove impurities

During the roasting process, the substances contained in the coffee beans undergo complex physical and chemical reactions to form unique coffee aroma substances. After grinding, the effective ingredients in the coffee are extracted into water under a certain temperature and pressure.

The drying process is facilitated by vacuum concentration.

Drying is the process of forming instant coffee powder and also the process that has the greatest impact on the quality of coffee powder during processing. At present, spray drying is generally used, but since the aromatic substances in coffee are highly heat-sensitive, they are very easy to volatilize at high drying temperatures (some volatilization has occurred during the extraction and concentration process), which is the main reason why instant coffee does not have the rich aroma of roasted and ground coffee.

The above is just the production process. In the high-temperature operation environment, the aroma has basically been lost. So how to make up for it? There is no other way except adding artificial flavors, right? The chemical ingredients added in the production process are not just flavors. You can look at the ingredient list on the instant packaging, but it is still marked. What is not marked is the "trade secret" of others.

Drinking instant drinks frequently is very harmful to your body

1. Carcinogen Acrylamide

Instant coffee produces a lot of acrylamide during the concentration and drying process. According to sampling data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the acrylamide content of instant coffee powder is as high as 458ppb, while the acrylamide content of freshly ground coffee is only about 10ppb.

In 2005, the Ministry of Health issued a notice: Instant coffee additives contain acrylamide, which is a carcinogen. The notice stated that acrylamide is a chemical substance and a raw material for the production of polyacrylamide, which can be used for industrial purposes such as sewage purification. Animal test results show that acrylamide is a possible carcinogen. Epidemiological observations of occupational exposure populations have shown that long-term low-dose exposure to acrylamide can cause symptoms such as drowsiness, mood and memory changes, hallucinations and tremors, accompanied by peripheral neuropathy (glove-like sensation, sweating and muscle weakness).

Foods with higher acrylamide content include fried potato foods, fried grain foods, baked grain foods, and instant coffee. Therefore, for the sake of human health, you should try to avoid eating these foods.

2. Hydrogenated vegetable oils and trans fatty acids

What about the three-in-one, several-in-one instant coffees, instant cappuccino, etc. that we often drink? Take a look at the ingredient list of Nestle and Maxwell House coffee, and you will see that they all contain the ingredient "hydrogenated oil", which is euphemistically called "edible vegetable hydrogenated oil".

Unlike other fats that can be taken in the diet, trans fats are harmful to health and are unnecessary nutrients for the human body. Eating trans fats will increase the risk of coronary heart disease because it can increase low-density lipoprotein and decrease high-density lipoprotein. The liver cannot metabolize trans fats, which is also one of the important causes of high blood lipids and fatty liver. Health management agencies around the world recommend reducing the intake of trans fats to a minimum. It is generally believed that partially hydrogenated vegetable oils pose a greater risk to health than pure natural vegetable oils.

In the dietary guidelines published in August 2004, the United States advised that the daily intake of trans fatty acids should be less than 1% of total energy. Excessive trans fatty acids have clear harm to the cardiovascular system.

The World Health Organization has repeatedly reiterated in its report "Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases: Implementation of the Global Strategy" that it is necessary to "gradually eliminate trans fatty acids." The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization recommend that the diet should contain only very small amounts of trans fats, less than 1% of daily caloric intake. For an adult consuming 2,000 calories per day, this amount is equivalent to no more than 2 grams per day.

The New England Journal of Medicine published a summary report on trans fat-related research in 2006, pointing out that even very low levels of trans fat intake can significantly increase the risk of coronary heart disease. The study showed that 30,000 to 100,000 deaths from heart disease in the United States each year can be attributed to the consumption of trans fats.

Ingredients listed on food labels such as "cocoa butter substitute", "vegetable butter (margarine, margarine)", "hydrogenated vegetable oil", "partially hydrogenated vegetable oil", "hydrogenated fat", "refined vegetable oil", "hydrogenated vegetable oil", "hydrogenated palm oil", "solid vegetable oil", "shortening", "artificial shortening", "snow white butter" or "shortening" contain trans fats.