Coffee News Roundup

COFFEE NEWS ROUNDUP: WEEK ENDING JUNE 22ND

Fionn Pooler

Jun 22, 2018 — 4 min read

Hello and welcome to another Friday, and another Coffee News Roundup.

It's a bit of a mixed bag this week, lurching from the positive to the sad to the, quite frankly, ridiculous. Although, thinking about it, that's pretty much every week. Let's get to it, shall we?

Coffee Doesn't Cause Cancer After All, Says California Health Regulator - via Fortune

Surprising absolutely no one, California's health regulator has moved to exempt coffee from the ridiculous Proposition 65 cancer warning label. Coffee, says the state's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, poses "no significant cancer risk", something anyone who has been following this weekly series (or is in any way interested in coffee) knew all along.

As the article in Fortune states, "Further, some have alleged that the case was brought primarily to reap financial rewards for the plaintiff’s lawyers, which has brought other similar lawsuits and has ties to the group that brought the suit."

That pretty much sums it up.

Read more here.

Coffee For Families: A Nationwide Fundraiser For ASAP - via Sprudge

Coffee is a global product, and it touches and is touched by many different people from all walks of life. It is also a global community, which is why it's so heartening to see Sprudge and dozens of coffee shops across the country come together to raise money for the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP) this weekend.

ASAP works to help families torn apart by the brutal, immoral and fascistic family separation policy that the Trump administration has enacted at the border. Among other services, they provide community support and emergency legal aid to refugee families facing wrongful deportations.

You can also donate directly to ASAP here.

Read more about Sprudge's fundraiser here.

Iced coffee is ruining the environment – and your body - via The Guardian

Coffee is awful and is destroying everything. Iced coffee is even worse. Stop drinking it.

Seriously, though, the fact that this is framed as being the fault of coffee, rather than lazy choices by individuals combined with a rapacious capitalistic system which encourages instant gratification and near-constant consumption, is frankly ridiculous.

Want to enjoy iced coffee and not be an awful person? Here's how:

1. Find a good, ethical coffee roaster that sources high quality coffee for a fair price and partners with farmers and producers to improve their lives. Talk to them about their coffee, where it comes from, how they produce it. Ask questions, take notes, encourage them to be better.

2. Buy what you need. Grind it.

3. Make an iced pour-over (or if you have a cold brew maker, use that).

4. Pour it into a glass and drink it black. Easy, delicious, and you won't destroy the environment (at least as much as is possible while being a human being alive in the world today).

And if you have to have cold brew while out and about (and really, do you need it?) then please remember your reusable cup.

Read more here.

Just Add Water—This Drinkable Black Metal Record is Made From Coffee - via Adweek

And now for something completely different: a black metal record that you can drink. Why? Don't ask stupid questions. Just crumble up your record and brew it.

Read more here.

THINGS YOU DIDN'T REALIZE WERE ANNOYING THE HELL OUT OF YOUR BARISTA - via Thrillist

This isn't actually news, but it is a good article that everyone should read, especially those who use coffee shops as their offices.

Read more here.

Is coffee good for you?

California doesn't think it's going to give you cancer, so that's something. But it can also help you recover from a heart attack, according to a new study. Scientific American reports on German scientists who used caffeine to "enhance the function of heart cells and protect them from damage."

Granted this was in mice, but still, as the lead researcher says, “the old idea that you shouldn’t drink coffee if you have heart problems is clearly not the case anymore.” So that's good.

Coffee can, on the other hand, make you a worse gambler, according to Sprudge.