Coffee Substitutes

dandelion roots

roasted grains

There was an anti-coffee bandwagon long before health foodists appeared on the scene. When early Muslims began using coffee as a “devotional anti-soporific” to see them through lengthy religious services, they stirred up fierce controversy with orthodox priests, who regarded coffee as a forbidden intoxicant. Later, in the sixteenth century, the establishment of coffeehouses in Constantinople excited the wrath of the ecclesiastics, for they cut down on church attendance. In England, the first coffeehouses were established in the seventeenth century and aroused the hostility of King Charles II himself, who claimed that they were a “disturbance to the peace and quiet of the nation” and harbored undesirable dissidents.

chicory roots

These rocky times passed, however. The raising of coffee became an enormously lucrative enterprise and spread from its native Abyssinia to all tropical parts of the world. The roasted seeds of the red fruit of the coffee plant began to be held in high regard as an alleviator of fatigue and sustainer of strength under stress.

Not until the twentieth century has coffee been strongly attacked on purely dietary grounds. Now we hear that it raises the blood sugar level of the body at an alarming rate, that it aggravates ulcers and heart conditions, that it leads to vitamin B deficiency, that it is habit-forming, that mixed with cream it is bad for the digestion, that it is full of harmful caffeine and tannic acid…and so we have the coffee substitutes: roasted grains, figs, beans, dandelion roots, chicory roots. No one will argue that the substitutes are indeed more healthful than coffee, and there are those who may find them toothsome. The only trouble is, they just don’t taste much like coffee.

           

If you persist in sticking with the real thing, you can palliate the bad effects somewhat by brewing coffee with the filter or espresso methods, which are said to release less tannic acid into your cup. Also, a snack of sunflower seeds (or other protein food) may help to prolong the “high” you get from your cup of coffee, by shoring it up with a real energy source. Be sure to resolutely stick to organic, shade-grown coffee beans that have been purchased under fair trade; to do otherwise is to risk not only your own health but the health and well-being of the workers on coffee plantations.