It is hard to imagine a world without coffee. Coffee is a drink that has come to be a hot favorite, quite literally, all over the world. It’s the second most traded commodity in the world, is found and loved in all parts of the word equally with 2.25 billion cups of coffee being consumed daily worldwide.
If cricket and soccer are religions, then drinking coffee is taken as seriously as observing a religious ceremony by people.
Its popularity can be estimated by the fact that many languages over the world have a term for it. Chocolate might be chocolate all over the world, but coffee isn’t .
In Yemen its qahwah, in Turkish kahveh, in Dutch koffie and is coffee in English and all parts of the world the English ruled.
But surely there must have been times when the world was unaware of the magical potentials of this drink. Well…it might surprise some to know that it did not even start out as a drink. Even more surprising is the fact that it was not humans who first discovered coffee’s effects.
As the popular Ethiopian legend goes, coffee was first tasted by goats. Yes, you read it right. Centuries ago, a goat herder named Kaldi noticed something unusual about the behavior of his goats. His meek and innocent animals were extra energetic and as some say, were even dancing one fine day!
He found out that they had been eating red berries of a shrub, the present day coffee (coffee goes from red berries to beans and then the brown crystals you use daily). Out of curiosity Kaldi tried the fruit himself and realized its stimulating effects on humans as well.
Seeing Kladi and his goats alert and active, a monk who is believed to have been struggling to stay awake during the long hours of his pray tried to find a solution to it by eating coffee berries.
When he saw that it worked, he took coffee berries for his fellows as well. It was one such unknown monk who decided to dry and then boil the berries in order to make a wine like drink.
It was eventually discovered that the seeds had a stronger effect than the fruit itself. And that’s how the idea of coffee beans came into being. We all know important such religious men were to the spread of languages, knowledge and traditions from one part of the world to another. The same happened in the case of coffee.
The drink which made Kaldi “the happiest herder in happy Arabia” has been spreading smiles and energy all over the world. Today coffee rules the world with people consuming it in all forms, in chocolates, drinks, ice creams, cakes, cookies and what not!
The Caffeinated phenomenon that began centuries ago is nowhere close to an end for at least centuries to come.
An interesting fact to know about your hot favorite is that coffee beans are natural pesticides that keep insects away from the plant!
