The harm of instant coffee in healthy life

The first is essence:

This starts with the production process of instant coffee.

Instant coffee is produced by extracting effective ingredients from fried coffee beans and drying them. In this process, some aromatic substances will inevitably be lost and the flavor and taste of the finished product will not be as rich and pure as that of directly fried coffee.

The production process is generally: pretreatment → roasting → grinding → extraction → concentration → drying

The pretreatment is to remove impurities. During the roasting process, the substances contained in coffee beans undergo complex physical and chemical reactions to form unique coffee aroma substances.

After grinding, the active ingredients in coffee are extracted into water at a certain temperature and pressure.

Vacuum concentration facilitates the drying process.

Drying, which is the forming process of instant coffee powder, is also the process that has the greatest impact on the quality of coffee powder during processing. At present, spray drying method is generally used, but due to the strong thermal sensitivity of coffee aroma, it is very volatile at higher drying temperatures (there is a certain volatility in the extraction and concentration process), which is the main reason why instant coffee is not fried coffee aroma.

The above is only the production process, during which coffee has been found to have lost its aroma in many high temperature operating environments. So how do you fix it? is essence. Manufacturers add essence in the process of extraction, concentration or drying (depending on different manufacturers, some companies are one step, some are multi-step plus essence).

The second is the quality of coffee beans:

We know that more than 90% of coffee beans on the market are grown from two types of coffee beans: Coffea Arabica and Caffea Robusta.

Arabica coffee trees are suitable for growing on fertile, well-drained slopes at altitudes of about 1,000 to 2,000 meters. During the day, they prefer mild, not scorching temperatures and less than two hours of direct sunlight per day. If there is no local afternoon thunderstorm or daily fog in the mountains, farmers must plant many taller trees in the coffee garden to provide shade and frost protection.

At night, they want an environment that is cold to about ten degrees Celsius but not too low. Too warm will make coffee berries grow too fast to produce small, strong, good coffee beans, but if it is too cold to frost, the coffee tree will freeze to death.

Arabica coffee is grown under strict conditions, so Arabica coffee produced in different regions, different altitudes and different climates usually has its own characteristics. When it is not roasted, it smells like grass. After proper roasting, it shows "fruity"(medium light roast) and "caramel sweet"(deep roast).

Robusta's coffee trees can grow on the flat ground at an altitude of about 200 meters. The leaves and flowers are slightly different from Arabica. The wild trees are also two meters taller than Arabica on average. It has strong resistance to disease and high temperature, and its yield is also high.

Robusta beans generally taste poor, sour, dull, different regions and different climates produce flavor differences are not too big, when not roasted smell like raw peanuts, roasted taste usually between "wheat tea flavor"(medium light roast) and "rubber tire flavor"(deep roast), difficult to show detailed flavor. So it costs half as much as arabica beans.

Because of the cost, instant coffee is of course the choice of Robusta coffee, its origin in Vietnam, China's Hainan, Yunnan, some countries in Africa. In addition, broken beans, bad beans and poorly developed varieties are often baked and ground directly without screening. Anyway, it is only extracted caffeine, and the lack of aroma can also be reconciled by various flavors and additives, which causes the quality of coffee beans used to make instant coffee to be very poor.

Third, there is a cancer risk:

In 2005, the Ministry of Health of the People's Republic of China issued an announcement: acrylamide is a carcinogen, children's intake is 2~3 times that of adults, instant coffee also contains carcinogens.

Acrylamide is a chemical that is a raw material for the production of polyacrylamide and can be used for industrial purposes such as sewage purification, the announcement said. Animal tests have shown acrylamide to be a possible carcinogen. Epidemiological observations in occupationally exposed populations have shown that prolonged exposure to acrylamide at low doses results in symptoms such as lethargy, mood and memory changes, hallucinations and tremors, accompanied by peripheral neuropathy (glove-like sensation, sweating and muscle weakness). Although the effect of acrylamide on human health needs further study, this problem should be concerned.