Now even coffee? What's next or rather what's left?

[Soulboy]

This is not so much a healing or science post, but a prevention one which I thought fits best in this section, so here it goes:

There was a shocking documentary style programme on German TV last night, saying that pharma giants provide coffee plantations and the entire logistics chain with chemicals to treat the beans before they even leave their country of origin.

Guess who profits if those chemicals make people sick in their country of destination?

They said that the maufacturers of the chemicals suggest using them once a year, but they then are used every month. The beans are treated with anti-mould agent to prevent fungus while drying and on every step of the logistical chain before export the beans are treated again and again and again.

They suggested that one should buy organically produced coffee. I would assume most on this board go for organic milk and other organic products a lot of the time.

Some use yoga, detox and cleansing products and all that, spending quite a bit of money on all that, but then drinking concentrated poison for breakfast every morning like myself. I am binning my remaining coffee bag to buy some organic one tomorrow morning.

[Arpheus]

The issue with organic stuff is that it still gets sprayed with the same crap,only good thing about organic is that the stuff isnt gmo,but organic things get sprayed with all kinds of toxic things as well,unless you plant your coffee i dont see a way out of this mess tho.

[Daozen]

CoQ10 is great for a long, safe burst of sustained energy. Often prescribed in Japan. Best to start slow and build up.

[Soulboy]

I used to take guarana lozenges from an organic store in my high school days. Marvellous stuff. The problem is that I like a nice Cappuccino in the morning. Will have to do a search for some untreated coffe, which will probably cost its weight in gold...

Since starting my ratfish oil experience, I found that I am able to get out of bed early much easier than before, so perhaps I may no longer depend on coffee to catapult myself out of dreamland into the waking world in the morning. Let's see

Thanks for your replies so far

[The Truth Is In There]

The issue with organic stuff is that it still gets sprayed with the same crap,only good thing about organic is that the stuff isnt gmo,but organic things get sprayed with all kinds of toxic things as well,unless you plant your coffee i dont see a way out of this mess tho.

i dare say the whole point of growing something organically is to use organic/natural fertilizer and pest repellants and not chemicals. that has nothing to do with GMOs which in and of themselves are not "organic", as in "natural".

i drink organic and fair traded coffee and so far i'm still alive so here's to the coffee pickers! :tea:

[spiritguide]

Maybe, just maybe, nutritional foodstuff is only that if it is grown locally and not shipped around the world to consume. The chemical preservatives/toxins are used because of long distances and amount of time from producer to consumer. We should all use our local environment for our foodstuffs and adapt accordingly. IMHO

[DeDukshyn]

The issue with organic stuff is that it still gets sprayed with the same crap,only good thing about organic is that the stuff isnt gmo,but organic things get sprayed with all kinds of toxic things as well,unless you plant your coffee i dont see a way out of this mess tho.

Not really true at all. Organic can be GMO, some certifications don't consider GMO/non-GMO for organics, although GMOs are usually designed to rely on a chemical so often just plain don't fit with organic methods.

Here's the common criteria for organic certification but it varies. Growing you own is always best.







Organic certification is a certification process for producers of organic food and other organic agricultural products. In general, any business directly involved in food production can be certified, including seed suppliers, farmers, [food] processors, retailers and restaurants.

Requirements vary from country to country, and generally involve a set of production standards for growing, storage, processing, packaging and shipping that include:

- no human sewage sludge fertilizer used in cultivation of plants or feed of animals[1]
- avoidance of synthetic chemical inputs not on the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances (e.g. fertilizer, pesticides, antibiotics, food additives, etc.), genetically modified organisms, irradiation, and the use of sewage sludge;
- use of farmland that has been free from prohibited synthetic chemicals for a number of years (often, three or more);
- keeping detailed written production and sales records (audit trail);
- maintaining strict physical separation of organic products from non-certified products;
- undergoing periodic on-site inspections.

In some countries, certification is overseen by the government, and commercial use of the term organic is legally restricted. Certified organic producers are also subject to the same agricultural, food safety and other government regulations that apply to non-certified producers.

[Prodigal Son]

They said that the maufacturers of the chemicals suggest using them once a year, but they then are used every month.
My question is, why? Who is making the decision to treat the beans every month against the manufacturers suggestion? Doesn't that cost more to the coffee growers? Is this being done out of necessity or is there arm-twisting going on?

[Soulboy]

I could imagine a scenario where these chemicals are provided at very low to no cost at all. After all, the return on investment ratio for the makers of these chemicals is rather high when those beans arrive on US and European shores and people develop chronic illnesses ;)

They might think they are on the safe side that way. If they lose their harvest due to mould, they are screwed and their children may go hungry or they can't afford to pay their plantation workers, for example. I think that their margins don't exactly get bigger every year.

Also, perhaps think of it this way. Our dish washing liquid is highly concentrated, so that people would need about pin's head worth of it to rinse several plates, but most people squeeze that bottle and drench their plates in the stuff. Humans do "not always" use the best common sense available on the market

[DeDukshyn]

I could imagine a scenario where these chemicals are provided at very low to no cost at all. After all, the return on investment ratio for the makers of these chemicals is rather high when those beans arrive on US and European shores and people develop chronic illnesses ;)

They might think they are on the safe side that way. If they lose their harvest due to mould, they are screwed and their children may go hungry or they can't afford to pay their plantation workers, for example. I think that their margins don't exactly get bigger every year.

Also, perhaps think of it this way. Our dish washing liquid is highly concentrated, so that people would need about pin's head worth of it to rinse several plates, but most people squeeze that bottle and drench their plates in the stuff. Humans do "not always" use the best common sense available on the market

Yup, all that sounds about right ... ;)

[eva08]

Yerba Mate - as far as I know - is an excellent choice. I have it in the morning instead of coffee and make it in the French Press instead of coffee. I do feel much better, BTW, since I quite my morning pot of coffee.

[Violet]

I can't help the impression of these news items being omnipresent nowadays. And they seem to all be pushing for mass bio-purchasing, which - if truly that is where we're led to - may not be that more harmful, especially not for the ones selling it.

[enfoldedblue]

Coffee is my last vice. I have one to two cups of fresh ground organic coffee with organic milk and rapadura (unprocessed) sugar in the morning. We used to always buy our organic coffee from local farmers at the markets, but for some reason in the last year or so it has been difficult to get so we have been buying fair-trade organic from the supermarket. I read that in Australia products could not be sprayed and still labelled organic...but I am not sure about this (anyone?).

I have yerba mate...but for me coffee is just the whole flavour experience and not really about the energy.

edit-- just found this:

Certified Organic coffee means no inorganic chemicals or pesticides are used in producing the coffee. The strict standards of the Australian Certified Organic system go further demanding no chemicals are used in the ENTIRE supply chain including roasting and handling here in Australia. This assures you there is no cross contamination with non-organic products.

Though I have also heard that coffee (organic or not) is really not very good for our bodies :( ...but I go with the everything in moderation motto at the moment.

[DeDukshyn]

Coffee is my last vice. I have one to two cups of fresh ground organic coffee with organic milk and rapadura (unprocessed) sugar in the morning. We used to always buy our organic coffee from local farmers at the markets, but for some reason in the last year or so it has been difficult to get so we have been buying fair-trade organic from the supermarket. I read that in Australia products could not be sprayed and still labelled organic...but I am not sure about this (anyone?).

I have yerba mate...but for me coffee is just the whole flavour experience and not really about the energy.

edit-- just found this:

Certified Organic coffee means no inorganic chemicals or pesticides are used in producing the coffee. The strict standards of the Australian Certified Organic system go further demanding no chemicals are used in the ENTIRE supply chain including roasting and handling here in Australia. This assures you there is no cross contamination with non-organic products.

Though I have also heard that coffee (organic or not) is really not very good for our bodies :( ...but I go with the everything in moderation motto at the moment.

It's not all that bad and does have some beneficial nutrients. Yerba Mate and Green Tea are high in l-theanine which offsets some of the negative effects of caffeine and gives you a much more focused and calm "pick-up" as opposed to the pick-up coffee can give which easily can cross the line into "too much" and make one jittery or have rambling thoughts. So for caffeinated beverages Yerba and green tea are a little better, but then again anything in excess is bad, green tea tends to have high amounts of fluoride (naturally from the soil - the plant picks it up), so in high quantities there might be a trade - off.

I do suggest as eva08 did, for any coffee drinkers wanting an alternative to try Yerba Mate. I like it, but tend to drink coffee anyway ;)

And yes "Organic" most simply means "no chemicals used during growing or processing".

[DouglasDanger]

The world is being taken for a ride when organic and fair trade coffee comes into play, this was started by big corpoations in the guise of helping farmers and healthier products, the farmer does not get any more money, most of it goes to the governments for the regulation of it. Organic coffee still has chemicals put on it during the fruit removal process and drying process so it does not ferment...


If you want a truly organic coffee.. you need to get the cat crap or monkey crap coffee from Indonesia, as it is treated with the enzymes of the animals intestinal track, no chemicals used in growth, none used in the fruit removal process of the bean and then dried, but expect to pay $1500 a pound for it, I'd ask for that much too if i was digging around shyt all day long for coffee beans! ;)

[Kraut]

If you really look at it, coffee is a luxury good. We've become used to having these all the time without remembering that they shouldn't be taken for granted. Tea, coffee, chocolate we all consume them in high quantities. Could be that I watched the same documentary, there was one I saw briefly a few days ago. It was mentioned that the price for coffee is much lower than it should be, due to the heavy competition.

When I looked into what coffee does to our adrenal glands I quit drinking it. I do miss it though, the taste of organic coffee is great. Years ago I tried organic coffee and was surprised how much better it tastes, less bitter and acidic.

http://www.naturalnews.com/012352_caffeine_coffee.html
While I take what I read with a grain of salt, there are many people who warn of the risks of regular caffeine consumption. I guess anything that gives us a "high" should make us careful. My only vice is chocolate, that's a hard one to kick, even more than coffee.

[Soulboy]

Hahaha, Douglas. Digging around ****e. I've always wondered about that coffee being such a gourmet product. Not sure if I'd pay that much for it or even want to try it. The organic coffee does taste better, not sure on whether there are still chemicals on it, of course. I'd hope that it's much less than on the regular one.

Kraut, that was most likely the same show, pre prime time daily programme. I'll give that article a go and google (or startpage) for caffeine and adrenal glands, thanks.

Also a sucker for high quality chocolate, not the milky stuff for kids, but 70% cocoa minimum and the less treatment, the better. Many of the benefits of cocoa are lost in modern mass production methods, but there are still brands out there that pay attention to preserving these qualities

[Kraut]

Bought some lovechock yesterday, it's made of raw cacao. 80%. All ingredients are organic. Pretty good. Raw cacao has a lot of benefits, a high content of antioxidants being one, but you don't have to convince me of giving it a try anyway. :)