I love coffee.  I’ve drank it since I was about 4 years old.  I know that sounds ridiculous, right?  Who’s mother lets them drink coffee at such a young age!?!  My parents are from Guatemala, so coffee is pretty common at all ages and at all times.  I was never kid that liked to play with the other kids.  I was a grandma from day 1.  I would rather chat with the ladies and have coffee than go out and play with the kids.

I know there are a lot of mixed feelings about coffee and caffeine.  Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having coffee everyday. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a household where coffee was perfectly natural all the time, but I don’t think it’s harmful.  I’ve taken a biology class (Brain, Mind and Behavior way back when) and understand the effects of caffeine on the brain but from what I recall, nothing too adverse (please correct me if I’m wrong).

On another note, coffee production is a huge part of the economy of many countries.  I found this really cool set of data (aka really cool for me the econ/development nerd) through the Food and Agriculture Organization that shows commodity production by country (you can change it to search by commodity or by country). I had fun playing around with it for a while 🙂

If anyone is interested, I saw a really interesting documentary on coffee production (it concentrates mostly on Ethiopian coffee production and commodity trading in Britain) called Black Gold.   I highly recommend it to anyone who’s interested

I’m almost done with my next food security topic.  Stay tuned!

What are your thoughts on coffee/caffeine?