Food and Nutrition:
What Everyone Needs to Know
Chapter 14
Spilling the Beans on Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate
Chapter 14: Key Themes and Abstract
Coffee, Tea, Chocolate, and the Caffeine Quesion
This chapter examines coffee, tea, and chocolate, including their nutritional benefits, health effects, and use in both traditional cultures and today’s world. Coffee is the world’s primary source of caffeine and may raise LDL (bad) cholesterol, a risk factor for heart disease, but coffee and caffeine have also been associated with less depression and improved cardiovascular health. Like coffee, tea is rich in phytochemicals, with similar benefits for blood pressure, blood sugar, cognition, and brain health. It highlights the powerful polyphenols, antioxidants, and phytonutrients found in green tea, kombucha, yerba maté, and matcha and explores the medicinal use of drinking chocolate and its rich polyphenols and antioxidants, noting that added sugar and milk reduce its value. Finally, the chapter considers the ecological impacts of coffee, tea, and chocolate production, including deforestation, environmental sustainability, biodiversity loss, monoculture, climate change, and the use of child and forced labor in the chocolate industry.
Guiding Questions
- How are coffee and caffeine unique?
- Does coffee cause high cholesterol and clogged arteries?
- Is coffee protective for cardiovascular and other chronic diseases?
- How does coffee impact mental health and mood?
- What are the main types of tea?
- What are the health benefits of black tea, green tea, matcha, and maté?
- How is kombucha different from other tea (and what exactly is it, anyway)?
- Will drinking (and eating!) chocolate improve your health—and mood?
- How does coffee, tea, and cacao production impact the environment, climate change, and farmworkers?
Beloved Brews, Your Health, Our Planet
Navigate the facts and hot-takes around some of the world’s most beloved foods—chocolate, coffee, and tea—while taking a closer look at your own habits: Consider who grows the plants behind your beloved brews, and why it matters way beyond your waistline. Must-know information to make better beverage choices, for everyone, and a broad lens on food within a nutritional ecology framework.
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