The interesting facts you might not know about coffee

Around the world, coffee production provides a livelihood for 25 million people. For them, coffee is a reason to get up in the morning while, for everyone else, it is the reason they can get up in the morning. Over two billion cups of coffee are drunk every single day, which raises the question of how the other five billion people manage to get anything done.

Here are the things you might not have known about the tasty brown drink.

The word ‘coffee’ has Arabic origins

The word ‘coffee’ comes from the Arabic word “qahwah”, which originally referred to a type of wine. There are a number of theories among linguists about the word’s current association with coffee.

Many believe that like wine, caffeine has an intoxicating effect, but qahwah can also be traced to the Arabic word quwwa, which means power or energy, or qaha which translates to ‘lacking hunger’ and could reference coffee as an appetite suppressant. Another theory is that it originates from Kaffa, a kingdom in medieval Ethiopia from where the coffee plant was first exported to Arabia.

Coffee beans are not really beans

The coffee plant grows berrie all along its branches and, once ripe and red, they are picked and their seeds are removed. It is these seeds that we incorrectly call coffee beans.

Legend has it that coffee was discovered by an Ethiopian farmer called Kaldi, who noticed his goats behaving strangely after eating berries from a coffee plant.

Coffee can keep you young

It has been suggested that the drink offers a range of anti-ageing benefits, including lowering the risk of cirrhosis, diabetes and dementia. It also contains antioxidants, which can prevent cell damage and help reduce wrinkles.

Perhaps with this in mind, Japan has opened a spa where you can bathe in the brown stuff. The resort, in Hakone, offers guests the chance take a dip in a hot tub full of coffee; a welcome opportunity to those who have spent too long in the spa’s other attraction, a hot tub full of red wine.

Coffee has always been an important way of socializing

Public coffee houses, usually associated with Sufism, first gained popularity in the 16th century. The first coffee houses opened in Cairo, Egypt, around an important religious university and slowly spread throughout the region.

People would visit these venues to drink coffee, listen to music, play chess and talk about current affairs and religion.

Source Internet