Reality Check

This blog has developed something of a sweet tooth of late, it would seem. A quick look at my bookshelf might make that less noteworthy, as it reveals a decided interest in food and nutrition.

In short, I find the subject fascinating. I have read Gary Taubes' Good Calories/Bad Calories, as weighty a book on the subject as exists. In it, Taubes mechanically dissects studies and observations from the past 200 years, attempting to piece together the evidence in to some sort of coherent picture. He wants to know why we're so unhealthy, and what we can do about it. His answer is something Dr. Atkins would be proud of. Taubes ends up endorsing protein and fat, while damning carbohydrates. A dinner of steak and green salad, hold the potato, please.

But you will also find Michael Pollan on my shelf. His nutrition advice? "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Born to Run also has a spot. In it, Christopher McDougall profiles the Tarahumara of Mexico, likely the greatest endurance athletes the world has never seen. Scott Jurek and several other American distance athletes are also featured prominently. Although you will find very little to connect the cast of characters, there are two common threads: Running, and a diet high in carbs, even sugar. In fact, I cannot recall a scene in the book in which meat is consumed. There are eggs, on the rare occasion. But the Tarahumara are almost vegan, and Jurek is.

And so how, exactly, do I go about deciding what to eat in this context? Or, better yet, what on earth should one put in their coffee?

There is a clue in that sentence. What, on earth, indeed. Every bit of nutrition I've read comes back to one basic point: Eat stuff that exists in nature. On this point, Taubes and Jurek would agree.

This same truth holds true for coffee, I think. Honey is food. So is cream. If you like those things in your coffee, put them in. They are, in truth, not calorically significant. Beyond that, they are delicious. Honey has been a staple food for humans for as long as there have been humans. We have a sweet tooth, and will consume sugar, in the form of nectar, syrup, or fruit, whenever we can. Cream, though not as long consumed as honey, is a well established real food.

Non dairy creamer may not be bad for you. Maybe Splenda isn't either. But I'm not sure. There just isn't enough of a track record yet. And so, in the mean time, put real things in your coffee. Things that you do not need to be a biochemist or nutrition geek to understand.

So what on earth do you put in your coffee? In short: Things that come from the earth.

Cream and Sugar

I have espoused an almost militant avoidance of cream and sugar before, both online and to anyone who will listen. I congratulate customers who ask for their coffee black, and occasionally chastise those who do otherwise.

After all, my barista "character", if you will, is even more sarcastic and charmingly antagonistic than my more natural self. Which I've discussed before. The area behind the bar is something a stage, the baristi the actors giving a performance. It's not just my job to make the drink; it's to make doing so interesting, in and of itself.

But I digress. My barista philosophy has been discussed before, and will be again. But this post is about cream and sugar.

Which surely invites the question: Why post on that topic at all? Hasn't my stance been made clear enough. Well, yes. In general, I think coffee tastes much better black. I'd even go so far as to say that, if you're doctoring your coffee, you really aren't tasting the coffee at all. It takes very little cream, and not too much sugar, to render all coffee a creamy-sweet beverage with the same texture and taste, regardless of the brew which forms the base.

And so, if you say you like coffee, yet never drink the stuff straight, I must disagree with you. Respectfully, of course, but also quite firmly. Coffee is the black liquid; adding other stuff to it makes it something else altogether, I think, although that beverage is nameless.

But again, none of this is new. I'm a psychotic purist, probably an evangelical elitist on this point. This is not news. What is, is that I drank coffee with cream and sugar yesterday, and in fact do so every so often.

Wait, what? Am I really that kind of hypocrite? Am I the vehemently religious senator who browses the personal ads on craigslist? Perhaps, but I don't think so.

You see, coffee has many different uses, for many different contexts. When I'm drinking coffee to drink coffee, I drink it black. The taste is better, and of course, much truer. But I do drink coffee for other reasons, on occasion.

A splash of cream makes coffee, already the best beverage for a cold day, all the more comforting. There's something uniquely warming about fat when the temperature drops.

And then there is coffee as a pre-workout beverage, or pre-race drink. When performance is the goal, both cream and sugar give coffee that little caloric bump to get your body firing on all cylinders. It is for this reason that I consumed coffee with cream and sugar last night.

It was the end of a long day at work, yet I had a workout planned; and I'm not the type to cheat myself. And so I grabbed a coffee, splashed some cream in it and added two packets of raw sugar. The drink now provided me with caffeine, a little comforting and hunger silencing fat, as well as six grams of sugar to fuel my initial efforts.

The workout went well, so I dare say the drink did its job. Now, back to my black coffee, and rigid elitism.

Wired

There are students out there much more dedicated than I. Truth be told, most students are probably more dedicated than me. After all, I'm the guy blogging about coffee during finals week. Not exactly academic stuff. But hey, you have to prioritize. 

Regardless, this being finals week, many undoubtedly plan on staying up to obscene hours of the night/morning in order to cram as much information in to their brain as will fit. A great plan. In order to do this, said individuals will ingest caffeine by the hundreds of milligrams. 

But what will they use as a source? Some will rely on soda, or energy drinks. Which is fine, I suppose, if you're in junior high. Those who have grown out of their need for sugar bombs will turn to coffee. 

But even within that category, there are ways to optimize caffeine consumption. Plain ol' black coffee works great, especially when consumed in enough quantities. But the amount of water that comes along with the caffeine might have someone running to the bathroom too often. 

If that's the case, consider espresso. Espresso is simply concentrated coffee, thus, by volume, it has more caffeine. One could easily shoot several shots down in a matter of moments. Of course, you could also enjoy the drink -- and probably should -- but that's not the point in this scenario.

Some gas stations now have coffee with added synthetic caffeine. If you don't care about the taste and have a death wish, this might be worth looking into. 

My best tip correlates nicely with an earlier post: Basically, that fat is your friend. You see, caffeine is fat-soluble. That means that, in order to absorb and utilize it fully, your body needs dietary fat. So the old trope about drinking coffee on an empty stomach being more effective? Wrong. To get wired more effectively, drink your coffee with or immediately after consuming food. Adding half & half or heavy cream to your coffee is an even easier route to take. But again, I must recommend that you lay off the sugar. Although there are a myriad of great reasons why you should, the one that's most relevant to this discussion is that sugar prompts a spike, and subsequent precipitous drop in energy levels. Despite what you've probably heard, caffeine is a much more stable source of energy, due to its blood sugar stabilizing properties.

The skinny on fat

You're the cream in my coffee, 

You're the salt in my stew 
You will always be my necessity, 
I'd be lost without you.

So croons Nat King Cole in his version of the 1928 broadway hit. Although the words are meant for an anonymous lover--or would be lover, as the case may be--the emphasis on cream in coffee being necessary is clear. Quite simply, the speaker would be lost without it. 

A past inclination of mine has been to say, then, that a person should simply get lost if they think coffee needs cream.  Which, frankly, was a little unfair of me. While cream does neuter a coffee's bite and flavor, there are situations in which that might not be the worst thing--say you've got an exceptionally bitter french roast, for example.

And believe it or not, a tiny dollop of cream can, in fact, enhance certain flavors in certain coffee. The blueberry notes in an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe or the honey nut strains in a quality Columbian can be accentuated by cream to the point where the coffee takes on a dessert-like quality. 

Notice I did say a dollop here--a full on pour will hide any coffee flavor behind a veil of dairy. If that's what you want, that's your prerogative. Just don't say you like coffee--that's all I ask. Say, instead, that you like coffee flavored dairy. Which is not necessarily the worst thing. A breve latte--that is, a latte prepared with half and half instead of milk--can be a rich treat for the hearty palate. 

So from a taste standpoint, cream in coffee is of course a matter of personal preference (but do try and use it in moderation). But what about all those calories? Wouldn't you be better off going for the skim milk or--even better!--the non dairy creamers? You could even find some that are non-fat!

This is where the matter shifts away from taste preference, and moves to nutritional value. If that's not of any interest to you, stop reading.

Still here? Ok then.

Cream is better for you than any of the would-be-foods you could substitute. Seriously.  I won't go overboard in explaining to you why saturated fat is not the enemy--and may in fact even be your ally. Rather, I will simply direct you to this website. But suffice it to say, if you like cream, don't deprive yourself of it in favor of skim milk (relatively benign) or non-dairy creamers (corn syrup solids and sugar--both metabolic poison).

Finally, there is the matter of those who, like me, do not tolerate dairy particularly well. In my case, casein (the protein in milk) triggers an ever-so-slight immunological response which causes a sore throat and mild fatigue. Cream is superior to milk for such persons as myself, because fat cannot trigger an adverse reaction--only the proteins and sugars can do that. And given that cream is more fat than anything else, there are less things to react poorly to.

But even still, some would be well advised to avoid dairy altogether. And given that I've deemed non-dairy creamers metabolic poison, I can't very well advocate their use now. For such persons, there is coconut milk. It, like cream, is rich and decadent. Even better, it's also real food, with plenty of good saturated fat--again, I'm serious. You can find it in the thai or asian section of any supermarket--and it even comes in a "lite" version, if you find the texture of the heavy duty version a bit too rich.