Some Interesting Facts About Coffee

Sitting here sipping my coffee, I was trying to think about what I wanted to blog about today. Epiphany! Why not talk about the very thing that over 400 million cups of a day is consumed in this country?! That's right...I said 400 MILLION cups of coffee are consumed a day in the United States alone (that's roughly about 146 billion a year)! So anyways, I decided that some research was in order for me to be able to give you any kind of information other than...coffee, I like it...It's good. So, without further ado, I'll get started from the beginning...

As many of you may be aware, coffee got it's start about the 9th century, in Ethiopia. Over the next few centuries it spread throughout what was known then(and still somewhat today) as the Muslim world. In the beginning it was used mainly for medicinal or religious purposes, but it's popularity grew so much that, in Turkey, if a man refused to give his wife the drink, it could be seen as grounds for HER to divorce him!

Coffee came to Western Europe roughly through traders in Italy and for a time the Roman Catholic Church wanted it banned, laying claim to the fact that since Muslims used it instead of alcohol, it had to be of the devil! It wasn't until the late 1500's, early 1600's that Pope Clement VIII settled the matter, by blessing coffee and thus allowing a tidal wave of coffee importation to cover the west. Coffee houses have been springing up ever since!

Now for some statically facts:

*The Coffee business employs roughly 30 million people world-wide.

*The U.S. is the leading consumer of coffee per year, followed by Germany and Japan.

*Brazil is the leading coffee producer with over 3,970 million coffee trees and Colombia

is in second place with 2/3 of Brazil's production.

*Coffee represents about 75 % of all the caffeine consumed in the U.S.

* October 1st is the official coffee day in Japan

* Americans consume about 3.1 cups of coffee a day

Needless to say, there is still much more about coffee that I want to learn about. If you might be interested too, the following websites might be a helpful jumping off-point for you:

http://www.gourmetcoffeeclub.com/cof_facts.htm

http://www.coffeefacts.com/

http://www.coffee-statistics.com/coffee_statistics_ebook.html

http://www.e-importz.com/Support/specialty_coffee.htm

http://www.sweetmarias.com/articles.shtml