BY MULUGETA GUDETA
The place of coffee in Ethiopia’s food culture is a well secured one. Coffee drinking in Ethiopia is part of the national diet. Coffee is often regarded as Ethiopia’s symbol of identity and the most important popular beverage. Ethiopian coffee is so popular here at home and internationally that it has always attracted the attention of musicians, historians, diet-experts, and now medical researchers. Coffee was always the pillar of the national economy, generating the lion’s share of the national budget every year.
No wonder then that a popular tune is sung in praise of coffee and the place it occupies in the national life in verses composed more than four decades ago. Coffee, coffee, the pillar of the economy/ the source of our revenue…goes the song that is often aired by most radio stations whenever they produce programs about coffee.
The history of Ethiopian coffee is fascinating as much as the mysterious shrub and beans that are producing the popular drink. Dietetics often treats the popular drink as part of Ethiopia’s traditional food items. More recently, medical research centers are increasingly interested in the health benefits of coffee.
Many coffee bloggers, experts as well as ordinary folks, have written about the magic of Ethiopian coffee. People in the medical world are conducting research on the effects of coffee on the various organs in our bodies. Coffee roasters have talked at length about the smell, flavor, color, and even the shapes of Ethiopian coffee. If one thing is common to all the writers, it is the fact that they write about coffee with love, appreciation, surprise and amazement. Nowadays, medical experts are also joining the voices of the coffee enthusiasts although their perspectives and objectives are different.
Coffee, otherwise known as the magical shrub discovered in Ethiopia, is continuing to amaze the world with its so far undisclosed magical health qualities. Some of the already known health benefits of coffee range from headache reliever, to mood booster, but the latest discoveries are far more astounding than those so far known. According to the results of more recent researches conducted by medical establishments, coffee drinking may be associated with increased longevity, protection against liver ailments to that of serving as a potential cure against kidney disease.
The latest medical news reaffirm that coffee has many health benefits and people who consume coffee regularly can add many years to their longevity. This is great news for the outlook on the potential or real health benefits of coffee that were misunderstood or misplaced until very recently. In Ethiopia for instance, many people for a long time held the view that drinking coffee causes hypertension and other health hazards. Coffee consumption was associated with stomach discomforts and other gastro-intestinal ailments. The medical findings of the last few years have overthrown all these publicly held unfounded allegations.
Coffee is not only a popular drink in Ethiopia. It is also an important part of the national food culture, besides serving as a domestic remedy against health problems like first degree burns or superficial skin ulceration. Whenever people got burns on their hands or on other parts of their bodies, elders in traditional rural communities for instance told the victims to pour some ground coffee on the burnt surface and attach it with clean cloth and wait until the wound healed. That was effective in helping the wound dry faster and heal in no time.
In Ethiopia, coffee is of the popular drink recommended for cure against headache. “Go and drink a cup of hot coffee!” is the recommendation anyone would suggest to anyone suffering from mild headache or anxiety. Although the science behind the complex effects of coffee on the neurotransmitters in the brain can be mind- blowing, some of the health benefits of the magical beans have been well-established for a long time now. Modern medicine continues its obsessions the medical potentials of coffee while dietitians are publishing their newest discoveries on various websites. “You can breathe a sigh of relief that coffee made the list. Aside from it being a delicious beverage adored by most of the world, coffee has a long list of health benefits as well.”
According to the Blue Zones website, Nicoyans, Ikarians, and Sardinians all make coffee a part of their daily routine and for good reason, too. The website also notes that coffee has been known to help your cognitive health over time and help to reduce the risk of age-related diseases like Parkinson’s or dementia.
Coffee has also been shown to help with weight loss, reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, and helping to reduce your risk of liver disease. It’s especially important to note that these health benefits come from black coffee itself and that adding heavy amounts of cream and added sugar can bring opposing effects!
Another website reports only two of the health benefits of coffee in the following piece of article, “You probably don’t need much convincing when it comes to the benefits of drinking coffee. Not only is it delicious, but it can provide you with a necessary energy boost in the morning or during a sleepy afternoon, and it has even been known to lower your risk of heart disease and diabetes. What some people may not realize, though, is that coffee can also improve your liver health.
Research has continually shown that coffee can have a hepatoprotective effect, which means it can help to protect your liver from damage. This is the opposite of alcohol, for example, which can lead to hepatotoxicity (liver damage) if consumed too frequently.
While coffee has been found to have powerful benefits for your liver health, it’s important to note that many of these studies cited in this article are centered on drinking black coffee. This does not mean that you have to give up cream and sugar forever by any means, but keep in mind that what you add to your coffee may impact its health benefits. Coffee may protect you from liver fibrosis. Liver fibrosis is a serious issue caused by the build-up of too much scar tissue in your liver. Over time, this can impact the function of your liver, but mild stages of fibrosis can often be reversed through lifestyle changes and medications.
One study from The Journal of Hepatology discovered that drinking coffee (and tea) on a regular basis could help reduce your risk of liver fibrosis. One of the ways to test for fibrosis is by measuring the stiffness of the liver, and this study showed that coffee consumption was associated with less liver stiffness.
“According to the Cleveland Clinic, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease affects one in four Americans—and in a new study, researchers suggest it’s the world’s most common cause of chronic liver disease. The good news? The same study reveals that one secret to preventing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease may be right inside your coffee cup. Here’s yet another reason to praise your beloved beverage. Keep reading to learn why a team of liver experts are suggesting coffee may help prevent non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
The recent medical discoveries can certainly give a big boost to demand of coffee in the global market as more and more people may shift from drinking non-health beverages to coffee in its various forms. This trend may be hard to follow up or document but coffee has incontestably assumed a respectable status on the list of beverages or food-related drinks because of its qualities as surefire medical benefits that are increasingly becoming popular around the world.
We may however be worried about Ethiopian coffee both as a major source of income to the economy and as one of the biggest employers both in towns and the rural areas where millions of farmers are directly or in directly earning their livings. The volume of exported Ethiopian coffee has not keep up pace with global demand and the popularity of the arabica type of beans. A number of countries that were unknown as coffee exporters a few decades ago are now assuming the leading position in the list of major exporters. Ethiopian coffee enjoys comparable advantage on the international market but we have not yet fully exploited this enviable position.
In order to make Ethiopia competitive in every way in the world market, we need to establish research centers and laboratories to study the relationships between Ethiopians’ food consumption patterns and the role coffee plays in the health of our people. We need to set up museums in every major coffee growing region in order to document the role the popular beans played in the day-to-day lives of tens of millions of farmers and how we could improve the quality of the beans in order to make use of the latest discoveries in coffee growing and processing technologies.
New brands of Ethiopian coffee should be taken to the world market and become competitive in the face of the domination from coffee heavyweights like Starbucks and others. Good news about coffee is also good news for Ethiopian coffee culture and its economy. But this requires hard and sustained efforts to make coffee not only Ethiopia’s symbol like long distance running. It should also allow millions of coffee farmers live a decent if not prosperous life.
The Ethiopian Herald July 2/2022
