| A. | Coffee is not just a drink. The coffee industry employs millions of people around the world through its growing, processing and trading. Five million people in Kenya are dependent on coffee industry to make a living. That is why it’s vital for the country to overcome an epidemic of theft, which is sweeping the production of coffee. A special police force has been set up to deal with the problem and coffee growers even have to sleep in their fields to stand up to possible thieves. |
| B. | Scientists have found that some plants, like the coffee plant, use caffeine to manipulate the memory of bees. Caffeine which improves the long-term memory of bees making them return to the plants. Caffeine impacts human neurological activity in a similar way, but on a very fundamental level. Although bees and humans are very different, some experts suggest it to be as old as the common ancestors we might have. |
| C. | A coffee ceremony is a ritualised form of making and drinking coffee. Coffee is offered when visiting friends, during festivities, and in a daily life. The coffee ceremony, bunna, is a key part of any Ethiopian social life. It is a standard way to welcome visitors at home. In Ethiopian culture the coffee ritual is practiced only by women and from a young age the girls are taught how to perform it. Recently the ceremony has been offered in Ethiopian restaurants in the USA and the UK. |
| D. | You may need a cup of coffee to kick-start the day and honeybees also get their buzz from drinking flower nectar containing caffeine. The excessive use of coffee can lead to an addiction. It happens when people have six or more cups of coffee per day. Caffeine, like any drug, is toxic in large doses. But the lethal dose of caffeine would require about 100 cups of coffee, but even the water from drinking that much coffee in one go would kill you before the caffeine did. |
| E. | England first became acquainted with coffee in 1637 when a Turk introduced the drink to Oxford. It quickly became popular among students and teachers. Coffee was served in coffee houses around the country and already by the mid-1660s only in London alone there were 82 of them! Coffee houses were also the meeting places of the scientific and literary worlds, frequented by people like Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, Samuel Johnson, and Alexander Pope. |
| F. | Coffees of the world have many distinct taste characteristics. The annual World Coffee Cup Championship takes place in France and latte art is among the most impressive contests. Using nothing, but hot milk and espresso, latte artists work to create complicated designs on the surface of the drink. Swirls and leaves are popular, but some artists produce pictures of dragons, cartoon characters, and even adorable teddy bears! |
| G. | We drink more than 600 billion cups of coffee every year. But only about 20 % of the coffee contributes to the drink. The rest is tasteless plant fiber which makes thousands tons every day. Scientists are working hard to find a useful way for this waste and one of the options is to turn spent coffee grounds into fuel. Some coffee production companies already send their waste to biomass plants to be burned along with wood. |