Once again continuing from last week’s botanical theme here are some more digitally altered gum leaves.
The original photo was taken on a white sheet of paper in the open shade of an awning.
Panasonic Lumix FZ1000 f8 ISO 125 23.3 mm 1/600s
Edited in Lightroom and Jixipix.
In modern Australian culture and elsewhere, coffee has reached near god-like status. It’s big business and for some, a life force.
According to many t-shirts, it is imbued with amazing properties.
It keeps some people alive: “I can’t function without my morning coffee.”
It can restore lost speech: “No Coffee – No Talkie.”
It can even prevent murder: Coffee helps me maintain my “never killed anyone streak.”
To be precise, it’s the caffeine (and other methylxanthines: see the diagram below) present in coffee that does the trick. Caffeine is classed as a heterocyclic nitrogen compound. Its structure is very similar to two of the important building blocks of DNA, adenine and guanine.
It is water soluble, a critical property because if it weren’t soluble, you wouldn’t be able to drink it in the first place! Caffeine has a melting point of 237°C, another important factor because it doesn’t evaporate away under normal processing conditions. It is an alkaline, white powder when in pure form. Chemically, it’s nothing like cocaine or other stimulants except that it also contains a bunch of carbon atoms joined in a complicated ring shape with a few nitrogens and oxygens and double bonds thrown in.
Caffeine and its biological precursors have been reported in over 160 species of plant. It is found in coffee beans, tea leaves, cocoa, cola nuts, guarana, and plants of the Ilex species such as maté.
Because caffeine is water soluble, the way a coffee beverage is prepared has a significant effect on the amount of caffeine in a cup. It’s all about maximising the solubility. Increasing the temperature of the water, increasing the surface area and making the beans more porous will increase the caffeine content in your daily cup. Hence we roast the coffee beans to make them porous (and tasty) then we grind them to massively increase the surface area before we soak them in hot water. Voila!
The caffeine dose can vary from around 50mg up to 150 mg per 250 mL cup.
In plants, caffeine is thought to act as an insect deterrent due to its extreme bitterness. Humans found out about its about stimulating effects a long time ago and have harvested and then cultivated caffeine-rich plants for millennia.
Caffeine does indeed have many well researched pharmacological effects, but most cherished is its ability to perk you up. In 1983 I wrote:
“Caffeine is a stimulant and considered the most widely used of self-administered drugs in the form of coffee, tea and cola beverages. Most people have been exposed to the stimulating effect of these substances and the majority of the population consumes pharmacological doses [~100mg] of the drug at regular intervals throughout the day.”
The list of effects is long.
Caffeine is absorbed rapidly and appears in the blood within 5 minutes of consumption. In most people, it takes about 3.5 hours to clear the blood and be excreted in urine, but in some individuals (like me!) who lack sufficient metabolic enzymes, it can remain active for much longer. Because it is cleared so quickly from the blood, it does not accumulate in the body.
Too much caffeine can lead to headache, tremors, abnormal heart rhythms and irritation of the gut. In addition, we all know about the effect caffeine can have on sleep. Chronic overconsumption of caffeine results in symptoms that are indistinguishable from anxiety neurosis. It would take about 10 g of pure caffeine to kill you.
A cup of 
black coffee has no nutritional value. It has no fat, no carbohydrates, no protein, no vitamins and only minuscule traces of magnesium. We have to agree the only reason we drink it is because of the caffeine. BUT who drinks coffee black? Not many people! It’s all the stuff we add to coffee that boosts its nutritional status. The data in the table below is taken from Gloria Jean’s website and is fairly typical of the data available.
The energy value of a whole milk cappuccino is going to cost you between 484 kJ (116 kcal) – 725 kJ (173 kcal) depending on size. For skim milk, you are looking at about half that. Soy milk is a little higher than skim milk for energy. The milk is going to provide you with protein, fat, calcium and some lactose. If you add sugar, you can add another 64 kJ (16 kcal) per teaspoon. A large cappuccino could, therefore, represent a fair proportion of your daily energy intake and must be considered if you are avoiding weight gain. If you go for something fancy, like a full cream caramel latte, you’re talking around 1000 kJ (220 kcal) or the same amount of energy in 3 eggs!
My thesis is too old to give me good advice in regards to the overall health effects of caffeine and coffee. So a search of the interwebs turns up some interesting information.
The website Coffee & Health states that:
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in a review on the Safety of Caffeine concluded that moderate caffeine consumption, of around 400mg caffeine per day (the equivalent of up to 5 cups of coffee), can be enjoyed as part of a healthy balanced diet and an active lifestyle. Pregnant and breastfeeding women are advised to limit their caffeine intake to 200mg per day.
It even goes so far as to say that caffeine consumption is associated with a reduced rate of mortality. Is this from the coffee itself or from the social aspect of coffee? That’s a whole other kettle of fish. Once again however we are talking about caffeine not the coffee beverage of choice. Sure, caffeine might have no ill effects, but if you pile in the sugar and cream, that’s a different story entirely!
In my own case, if I have more than one cappuccino a day, I end up with a belly full of gas. I know from anecdotal experience I am not the only one who suffers this consequence. As stated above, caffeine stimulates the production of gastric juices which speeds up digestion, milk contains lactose which challenges many adults at the best of times and with the relaxation of smooth muscle, which incidentally is the type of muscle in your intestines… well … well, you know how it’s going to end!
I guess you need to consider whether your personal circumstances can cope with the increased energy consumption of milk based coffee beverages. If it can’t, you might want to consider black coffee or even a splash of milk in a cup of International Roast!
Next week: Is coffee sending the world broke?
Continuing from last week’s botanical theme. This time with some images of Grevillea flowers.
The original photo was taken on a white sheet of paper in the open shade of an awning.
Panasonic Lumix FZ1000 f8 ISO 125 23.3 mm 1/600s
Edited in Lightroom and Jixipix.
I sat down with the intention of writing a short piece about coffee and the effect it has on our waistlines and wallets. As I started doing some research and looking at various websites on how many calories there are in various coffee beverages, how much coffee is drunk daily in Australia etc.; it got me thinking.
Where does this coffee come from? How much do we as a nation, spend? What about worldwide? Are there long term health benefits or does it cause health issues? Is it sustainable? All those disposable coffee cups have got to end up somewhere. Can all those corner cafes be supported? Where would you go to meet friends/on a first date if you don’t want to drink coffee and it wasn’t beer o’clock yet? What about tea? Would we solve all/any the issues if we switched to drinking only tea? Is coffee even worth drinking? Now come on, be honest, do you even LIKE the taste of coffee?
My swirling mind became caught in a spiral of ideas worse than being trapped in a Pinterest Vortex! I decided it was way bigger than one post could handle and it needed to be a series of blog posts. This post serves as an introduction and sets the scene. I will follow it up with another 5 posts over the next few months. (It might even grow from that number!)
Part 1 will be about the Waistline Effect: here I will explore the pharmacological, health and dietary effects of caffeine.
Part 2 looks at the economic effects of coffee on a micro (your household budget) and macro (the global economy) scale.
Part 3 investigates the environmental impact: are we burying our cities under a mountain of disposable cups. Are Keep Cups going to save the day? Are we causing rural poverty in those countries that supply our daily fix?
Part 4: What are the cultural differences in coffee drinking. Is Australian the only place you can buy a decent skim cap? I need your help here. Have you ever been able to buy a decent coffee in another country?
Part 5: Tea v Coffee. Does it make a difference? Plus anything else I haven’t been able to fit into the other posts.
I feel like a bit of a coffee expert, not because I drink lots, but because way back in the day when I was completing my undergraduate degree in Food Technology, I wrote my Honours Thesis on “Caffeine and its Derivatives in Australian Foods and Beverages”.
With nothing more than my trusty portable typewriter and correction tape, I banged out one hundred and thirty pages of meta-analysis and lab results about methylxanthines, the chemical group which includes caffeine and other similar compounds. While some of it is outdated, it remains a good starting point.
On a personal note, I’m a tea drinker. I limit the amount of coffee I buy from a cafe to around 1 – 2 cups a week if that. This decision is based on three factors.
I hope you’ll enjoy these posts and let me know your favourite cafe in the comments below!
I usually photograph “real” places, events or objects. I very rarely set up a scene with the intention of photographing it. I want to experiment with studio lights and created scenes. I have started with natural light and have used natural objects from native Australian plants. I edited some using the Jixipix suite of apps.
The original photo was taken on a white sheet of paper in the open shade of an awning.
Panasonic Lumix FZ1000 f3.5 ISO 125 14.25 mm 1/500s
Edited in Lightroom and Jixipix.
The Australian Writers’ Centre’s Furious Fiction competition for April 2019 centred on three lines of dialogue.
Viz:
You can find out more about this fun competition at https://www.writerscentre.com.au/furious-fiction/
The door of the pub flew open, and an old woman, lugging an oversized suitcase and a heavy backpack, struggled to fit through its frame .
She flung her suitcase bedside a table close to the fireside and strode up to the bar. The bag was big. She was small.
“Impressive!” the bartender thought, surprised by the old girl’s strength.
“What’s it going to be then, eh?” he asked.
She ignored him as she poked around in her backpack muttering to herself.
“It’s in here somewhere. I know I packed it.”
He presumed she was looking for her wallet, but when she slammed that down on the bar, he figured he was wrong.
“Madam?” he tried again, “What will it be?”
Judging from her skin, her hair and her sensible shoes, he figured she must be around 70. The backs of her hands had the tell-tale age spots that he’d seen on his own grandmother.
He figured she was deaf. “MADAM?” he said with more volume.
She shot him a soul-withering glance. The crimson glint of the fire was reflected, blood-like, in her dark, bright eyes. He took a step back. He figured he wouldn’t ask her again.
“Ahhh! Here it is!” she said holding a small crystal vial. It was filled with fluorescent liquid that sparkled with the same red he had seen in her eyes. His curiosity stirred.
“Toilet?” she asked abruptly.
He pointed to the corner of the room. The woman turned on her heel, leaving her stuff in a pile on the bar.
When the woman returned, her skin was smooth and lustrous, the age spots gone. Her dark hair no longer anchored by steely grey. Thirty years had vanished!
His mouth flapped wordlessly.
“It’s fantastic, isn’t’ it!” she said.
“What is it?”
“It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution,” she whispered as she held the vial up to the light, twitching it, so the ruby liquid sloshed about.
“Would you like to try it?” she asked, her voice laced in honey and silk.
“Yes,” his gasped, with fearful anticipation.
“It’s not cheap…come.” she beckoned.
He took all the cash from the till and followed her into the cold night.
….
In the pale morning light, the police officers stood over the bartender’s cold, grey body.
“It’s a bit queer that his lips are still so red, isn’t it Sarge?” the constable asked.
“I don’t understand.” the sergeant said quietly as he removed a vial from the bartender’s stiff fingers. “He’s never done anything like this before.”
The noise of tyres on gravel distracted them and they watched as a red convertible passed slowly by. Their eyes were drawn to two identically dressed women sitting up front. Mother and daughter perhaps? One around 40, the other maybe 70?
Their lips painted red.
Their eyes bright and hard.
Their licence plate – BLKWYDOS
The early morning sun backlights these small yellow mushrooms that have emerged after a week of rain in Wollongong Botanic Gardens
Panasonic Lumix FZ1000: ISO 125 1/1000s f3.6
As I was looking for articles about older women doing amazing things, I came across this story in the Telegraph. Not exactly what I was searching for, but thought-provoking none-the-less.
The report concentrates on the shift in attitudes of women who, 20 years ago, may have been described as middle-aged. It highlights how older women are generally taking on a more positive approach to aging and being more confident to express a style other than “grandma”.
This section particularly resonated with me and sent me on the search for more information.
Everywhere we look, highly visible older women are rewriting all the rules. From JK Rowling to Nicole Kidman; Michelle Obama to Anna Wintour, they are at the peak of their power and creativity.
They are engaged, influential and often increasingly political.
There’s even a new term to describe people with this no-age mindset: ‘perennials’
It was coined by US internet entrepreneur Gina Pell, 49, who explains, ‘Perennials are ever-blooming, relevant people of all ages who know what’s happening in the world, stay current with technology and have friends of all ages. We get involved, stay curious, mentor others, and are passionate, compassionate, creative, confident, collaborative, global-minded risk takers.’
Hell yeah! I want to be a perennial!
You can hear more about Gina Pell’s idea of perennials in this Youtube video. Not everything she says had the same point of resonance, but I like where she is coming from.
I think the Telegraph has misquoted her because Nina refutes the concept of being ever-blooming. My interpretation is that age should not be equivalent to relevancy.
I have a big adventure looming with a 5-week road trip around Scotland. With less than 2 months till departure, I am madly micro-planning. My itinerary is pretty well fleshed out and I’m just filling in the fine details. I have the accommodation booked, the hire car sorted, the ferry crossings reserved and a few day trips locked in.
I will be recording Episode5 of “Planning my Soctish Holiday ” video soon.
You can have a look at some of my previous posts in the links below
Planning My Scottish Holiday Ep 1
Planning My Scottish Holiday Ep 2
Planning My Scottish Holiday Ep 3
Planning My Scottish Holiday Ep 4
This quick post is to introduce you to my new travelling companion – Ian – Ian of Clan Mangerton. He’s the strong silent type! In the past I have travelled with a rabbit, chickens and a new set of chickens after I lost the first ones! Ian will be featuring in some of my facebook posts and will make some appearances in the blog posts I write while I am away.
Travelling mascots are always a bit of fun! He’s smaller than a gnome and can stand on his own two feet!
