8 Health Perks Of Your Favorite Coffee Roast

Coffee: that delicious beverage we all look forward to in the morning and (depending on your lifestyle and relative level of stress) throughout the course of the day as well. While most of us drink coffee for its taste, as well as to boost our energy, there are also many fantastic health benefits to this magical little bean.

Drinking coffee can help you lead a more productive, happy, and healthy life. Amanda Gardner of Health.com references a study conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine, showing that coffee enthusiasts are proven to have a significantly lower risk of premature death than those who abstain. Here are some ways enjoying coffee can improve your wellbeing.

1. It helps you lose and maintain weight

Coffee can help you burn fat. For years, people have used coffee to help decrease food cravings and improve energy levels. This effect is due to the fact that caffeine can boost your metabolic rate, causing you to burn more calories in a shorter amount of time. Coffee can also take the edge off cravings caused by harmful habits such as smoking.

2. It improves athletic performance

If you work at a manual labor job such as construction, or regularly play sports, then you understand the true meaning of exhaustion. After five solid days of lifting, shifting, running, and kicking, it’s not uncommon to feel tired and depleted. Coffee raises natural epinephrine levels in the blood, so you can maintain or exceed your normal activity level for a more extended period of time.

3. Coffee Contains Many Essential Nutrients

Many people think of coffee as a stimulant and nothing more, but nothing could be further from the truth! Coffee contains many essential vitamins and minerals; in fact, just one cup contains a significant amount of Manganese, Magnesium, Potassium, and Riboflavin – also known as Vitamin B2, which helps convert carbohydrates into fuel for your body.

4. It lowers risk of diabetes

Type II diabetes has become one of the most common ailments for younger and older people alike. However, those that drink moderate amounts of coffee have up to a 67% lower risk of developing the condition, according to the American Society for Clinical Nutrition.

5. Dramatically Reduced Odds of Suffering From Dementia Or Alzheimer’s

Coffee has also been found to reduce the risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s. Those that enjoy their java have up to a 65% less chance of ever developing Alzheimer’s. Since there is no cure for this devastating health issue, prevention is extremely important. What are you waiting for? Sample our coffee of the month, and keep your brain happy and healthy.

6. Coffee prevents some cancers

Cancer is one of the leading causes of adult deaths worldwide. Enjoying 4 cups or more of coffee per day can reduce your risk of liver cancer by up to 40%, and coffee drinkers reduce the risk of developing colorectal cancer – one of the top five fatal cancers in the world – by an average of 15%.

7. It improves your outlook on life

Unlike some of the other illnesses on our list, depression is often an invisible disease. When someone is depressed for an extended period of time they can become listless, unproductive, and in extreme cases, even suicidal. Coffee helps combat depression by boosting your natural levels of serotonin – the chemical responsible for your sense of happiness and wellbeing. Studies have shown that consuming 4 or more cups of coffee per day decreases the risk of suicide by more than 50%!

8. It contains many antioxidants.

Coffee is a rich source of antioxidants. Most of us aren’t as good at eating our fruits and vegetables as we should be, often because high-quality fresh produce is hard to come by, or expensive. Coffee, however, is readily available, and contains a lot of antioxidants to help your body prevent and fight disease.

Perk Up, Give Back

Coffee isn’t only good for your body; it’s good for the world, too. When you purchase healthy, organic and fairly traded coffee online through Camano Island Coffee Roasters, you are helping farmers make a sustainable living for themselves and their families. So go ahead and enjoy your morning, mid-morning, lunch-time, afternoon, and evening cups being healthy never felt so good.

Picking The Perfect Coffee to Compliment Your Meal

If you think that any type of coffee is appropriate to round out your meal – whether you’re having steak, pad thai, or pasta – then you are missing out. Different coffees are unique in flavor, so they will pair better with some foods than others. You wouldn’t serve a desert wine with your smoked salmon, so to avoid an unfortunate flavor clash, here is a handy guide to pairing Camano Island Coffee Roasters blends with your meals.

A Relaxing Brunch

The next time you have a free Sunday, why not celebrate by inviting a few friends over for brunch? Instead of offering just decaf and regular coffee, mix things up a bit with a variety of blends to complement the different foods you serve. Place an urn of African Reserve next to the fresh fruit, Brazil Dark Roast next to the smoked meats, and Papua New Guinea Light Roast next to the eggs. African Reserve has hints of blueberry and maple syrup that will expertly compliment the berries, the spice of the Brazilian Dark Roast will boost the smokey flavor of your meats, and the light roast of Papua New Guinea won’t overpower your scrambled eggs. Soon, all your friends will be excited to try new coffees with you every weekend.

Decadent Dinner

Planning a special dinner can be time-consuming, but can be incredibly rewarding when you show your friends a whole new way to enjoy their favorite morning beverage. Go above and beyond by offering your guests not only great food, but great coffee, too. Heavy meat dishes and rich stews can go well with darker roasts, where lighter dinners such as a spicy Thai stir fry may be more enjoyable with a light roast from Papua New Guinea. You can even use coffee to marinade your meat, giving your steak, chicken, or chops a unique, smoky flavor.

Deserts

A fruity desert would pair well with a light to medium roast coffee. With its fruity flavor and hints of blueberries and maple syrup, African Reserve is a great choice to pair with your desert course. Rich chocolate desserts, such as chocolate mousse, will taste divine with a dark roast from Brazil, and crème brûlée will dance on your tongue when paired with the citrus undertones of a light roasted coffee from Guatemala. When combined, coffee and dark chocolate desserts are an antioxidant powerhouse, so if anyone looks at you sideways, tell them you’re just thinking of your health.

Learning To Enjoy Coffee Like A Fine Wine

Wine tastings are a popular social and gastronomical activity; people love getting together to discuss complex flavors, and how the growth and processing of the grapes have affected the taste. Coffee tastings can be a very enjoyable experience as well, with the added benefit of no hangover afterward! Consider getting some friends together and trying a large selection of different coffees. Serving a variety of finger foods will give you and your guests the chance to see what pairings work best. You may be surprised to find just how much the flavor of the coffee varies depending on what you are eating with it. Many people don’t ever try more than one or two types of coffee, which is a real shame considering how many rich, diverse varieties are out there.

Health-Conscious Coffee: An Organic Gift

Pairing organic, shade-grown, fairly traded coffee with your meals is a great way to enhance both taste and your health. Camano Island Coffee Roasters has a large selection of 20 different roasts available, there are roasts and varieties perfect for any occasion. Getting multiple roasts in your monthly order is a great way to have different coffees on hand, so you can pair them with your meals perfectly. If you love pairing your food with great coffee, join our coffee lovers club today!

Why You Should Consider Low Acid Coffee

Introduction

We all love coffee. It’s a great pick-me-up on those difficult Mondays or late evenings at work. Brewing it has become part of your everyday routine, and no breakfast feels complete without it. Coffee is proven to lower your risk of heart disease and loaded with antioxidants.

But coffee, like most soft drinks, teas and anything with sugar, is acidic.  This acid can occasionally be detrimental to your health.

That’s why you should be drinking low-acid coffee, like our many roasts here at Camano Island Coffee Roasters. But where does this coffee acid come from? Why can it be bad for you? And finally, how does Camano Island Coffee Roasters create low-acid coffee?

It’s all about the bean

A coffee’s acidity originates with the beans themselves, but there are several factors that may affect the acidity of a particular roast or brew. Coffee is inherently acidic. That acidity, combined with the caffeine the plant produces, serves as an all-natural defense against insects. If a coffee plant has lower caffeine levels, it will usually have a higher acidity to help combat the insects.

While coffee will always be acidic, how the plants are grown and harvested can also have a major effect on how acidic your cup of Joe tastes. Coffee plants grown at higher altitudes and in direct sunlight will produce beans higher in malic acid, giving your coffee a sour taste. Beans harvested too early can have high concentrations of citric acid, a naturally occurring acid commonly found in lemons, limes and oranges. This concentration typically goes away when the beans are properly matured.

Of course, non-organic beans can occasionally have even higher acidity levels due to unnatural additives and pesticides used during the growing process.

That is why at Camano Island Coffee Roasters we’ve focused on low-acid roasts. We avoid high acidity by only purchasing organic, shade-grown coffee that is properly matured. This shade means the beans are exposed to more consistent growing conditions, and, therefore, the plant feels it needs to produce less acid.

Why it matters to you

Most coffee drinkers love the taste and subtleties of their favorite roasts, but overly acidic coffee can overwhelm the taste you love. Sour and bitter flavors are the results of acid, and can ruin a cup of coffee. Also, as the coffee cools the acid tends to separate from the rest of the drink, resulting in a shimmering film on the top of your coffee. The first sip of cooled coffee can taste especially bitter as a result. Low acid coffee tastes great even as it cools.

Coffee acid isn’t bad for you in reasonable amounts, but it can have some adverse effects on your health in excess. Drinking overly acidic coffee can result in some stomach disruption, leaving you feeling nauseated. Regular coffee drinking can result in more adverse gastrointestinal side effects including acid reflux disease.

The acid in coffee can also damage your smile. Over time, the acid can wear on your dental enamel, causing abrasions that can allow coffee and food to stain your teeth. Drinking Camano Island Coffee Roasters low-acid coffee and following your morning cup with a swig of water to rinse helps mitigate all of these negative side effects.

Try Low-Acid Coffee On Us

Does your morning cup of coffee leave you dissatisfied and with a bitter taste in your mouth? A quality roast of low-acid coffee can make all of the difference, and has some great health benefits in the long run. That’s why we only roast organic, shade-grown and low acid coffee at Camano Island Coffee Roasters.

Want to give it a try? We’re offering a free pound of our low-acid coffee when you join our Coffee Lovers Club. There are plenty of great varieties to choose from, and they’ll be delivered to your door fresh. No more coffee that’s been sitting on store shelves for months.  To find out more, click here.

4 Ways Organic Coffee Improves Brain Health

“Coffee’s bad for you! Don’t drink that stuff!” We all know that one person who insists coffee will cause you health issues further down the road. Next time that ‘friend’ harasses you about your love for coffee, tell them about the 4 Ways Organic Coffee Improves Brain Health .

1. Organic Coffee Improves Brain Health By Increasing Your Memory

If you’re anything like me, you forget things all the time. But recent research reports that you might be in luck – coffee can help your memory!

Michael Yassa, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins comments on a recent study, “We’ve always known that caffeine has cognitive-enhancing effects, but its particular effects on strengthening memories and making them resistant to forgetting has never been examined in detail . . . We report for the first time a specific effect of caffeine on reducing forgetting over 24 hours.”¹

So how did the John Hopkins researchers come to this conclusion? First, they asked their participants to study a series of images. Then they gave some of the participants caffeine and others a placebo. They then sat through a boring 24 hours. Many yawns later they tested the participants memory of the images. They found the participants who took caffeine could remember more images than the participants who took just the placebo.²

For the next round of testing the researchers made it trickier. As if looking at pictures and trying to remember them wasn’t hard enough. For the next round of testing they used a variety of images — some the same, some new, and some similar but not the same. Those sneaky researchers.

Dr. Yassa gives us his take, “If we used a standard recognition memory task without these tricky similar items, we would have found no effect of caffeine. However, using these items requires the brain to make a more difficult discrimination – what we call pattern separation, which seems to be the process that is enhanced by caffeine in our case.”³

Of course, while these studies do promote the benefit of caffeine, you always want to be careful that you don’t consume too much of it. To prevent caffeine overload, we recommend always drinking Arabica, shade-grown coffee beans. When beans are grown in the shade they grow slower — developing less acidity. This results in a smoother, less bitter cup of coffee. 

Additionally arabica beans contain half of the caffeine content of other beans. Shade-Grown coffee is the best way to enjoy a safe & healthy dose of caffeine while still finding a way to improve your brain health with coffee.

2. Organic Coffee Improves Brain Health by Preventing Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s Disease is a debilitating neurodegenerative disorder that affects 1.2 million people in Europe alone with an estimated 75,000 new cases diagnosed each year.⁴ But there is hope. In addition to new drug therapies, caffeine has been shown to have a noticeable effect on treatment and prevention of Parkinson’s.

Research from as far back as 1968 points to caffeine in coffee having a positive impact on preventing and reversing some of the symptoms of Parkinson’s.⁵ In fact, a study conducted in 2000 found that men who drink 4 or more cups of coffee per day have a five-fold reduced risk for developing Parkinson’s Disease.⁶ Another study found the risk reduced from 24% – 32% for every 3 extra cups of coffee consumed per day.⁷

There’s a lot of research out there that gives us hope, but how exactly does coffee help prevent or reverse Parkinson’s disease? Caffeine reverses Parkinson’s disease by inhibiting the damaged receptors in the brain. These are the same receptors that control motor function. When damaged they create the tremors most associated with the disease. So basically the caffeine in coffee works to increase motor activity while at the same time reducing motor deficits like tremors caused by Parkinson’s Disease.⁸

In short, you’re doing your future self a favor by drinking that cuppa joe every morning! But one more thing to keep in mind: organic coffee. Coffee is one of the most absorbent crops on the planet. It’s also sprayed with more pesticides than any other crop on the planet outside of Tobacco. Make sure to choose organic and after one sip you’ll see why.

3. Organic Coffee Improves Brain Health by Helping You Avoid Stroke

There are many good practices and lifestyle choices you can make that keep you at a minimal risk for stroke, and coffee is one of them! There haven’t yet been many in depth studies done on the connection between coffee and stroke prevention, but the research & statistics currently available on the matter are quite impressive, particularly among women:

“A research study out of Sweden revealed that women who consumed more than a cup of caffeinated coffee daily reduced their risk of stroke by 22 to 25 percent.⁹

Scientists have yet to pinpoint what exactly it is about coffee that has such a strong effect, but I suspect we’ll see more studies on that in the coming years. I don’t know about you, but until then, I’m content drinking my organic coffee knowing that something about it is reducing my risk of a stroke.

4. Organic Coffee Improves Brain Health By Helping You Slow Down Alzheimers

Last but not least, caffeine in coffee seems to be helping to prevent Alzheimer’s disease too. A study conducted over a 21 year period showed a 65% decrease in onset of Alzheimer’s Disease for people who started drinking 3 – 5 cups of coffee per day.¹⁰

Some reports are even showing that caffeine in coffee can delay the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease in patients who already have some form of mild dementia. ¹¹

So the next time your friend looks at your hot cup o’ joe and says “You’re going to regret that!”, tell them they’re missing out on an easy and tasty way to improve brain health with coffee.

I mean, really, If preventing memory loss, Parkinson’s, strokes, and Alzheimer’s is as simple as a few cups a day – why wouldn’t you want to drink delicious organic coffee?!

Sources

1.http://hub.jhu.edu/2014/01/12/caffeine-enhances-memory

2.IBID.

3.IBID.

4.European Parkinson’s Disease Association (2011) ‘EPDA Annual report 2010-2011.’ Available at: http://www.epda.eu.com/welcome/

5.Nefzger M.D. et al. (1968) A retrospective study of smoking in Parkinson’s disease. Am J Epidemiol, 88:149-158.

6.Webster Ross G. et al. (2000) Association of coffee and caffeine intake with the risk of Parkinson disease. JAMA, 283:2674-2679.

7. Costa J. et al. (2010) Caffeine exposure and the risk of Parkinson’s disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies. J Alzheimers Dis, 20 Suppl 1:S221-38.

8.<>a href=”http://coffeeandhealth.org/topic-overview/coffee-and-parkinsons-disease/”>http://coffeeandhealth.org/topic-overview/coffee-and-parkinsons-disease/

9.http://www.caffeineinformer.com/prevent-a-stroke-by-drinking-caffeine

10. Eskelinen M.H. et al. (2009) Midlife coffee and tea drinking and the risk of late-life dementia: a population-based CAIDE study. J Alzheimers Dis, 16:85-91.

11.Cao C. et al. (2012) High blood caffeine levels in MCI linked to lack of progression to dementia. J Alzheimers Dis, 30:559-572.