Five Popular Coffee Myths

In the USA, 64% of everyone age 18 and over drink at least one cup of coffee a day. That makes it big business. In 2016, the worldwide coffee market had revenue of just over $100B, representing consumption of 500 billion cups of coffee every year. As a commodity, the value of coffee is second only to petroleum. Unsurprisingly, this leads to an enormous amount of marketing misinformation and urban legend around the ubiquitous beverage.

Here are 5 popular things we all know about coffee that just ain't so.

1. Dark roast coffee has more caffeine than lighter roasts.
    All coffee contains the same amount of caffeine by weight. By
    volume - the way most of us measure our coffee - darker roasts
    actually have a lower caffeine content than more lightly roasted
    beans.

2. Dark roasted beans have a richer, more complex flavor than
    lighter roasts.
    According to coffee expert and blogger Denver Wilkenson, "When
    it comes to the roast of your coffee, while a great deal of it simply
    has to do with personal taste, don’t believe mass marketing that
    says the dark roast is the ultimate expression of quality coffee.
    It’s not. Dark roast simply means that the coffee bean has been
    roasted to a higher temperature and typically for a longer period
    of time. This causes all of the flavor molecules stored within the
    coffee beans-both the good and bad flavors-to be burnt away. By
    roasting so dark, the end consumer (you) can’t tell whether it’s a
    good bean or a bad bean because all the natural flavors have
    been turned to charcoal.

    This is not to say that dark roasts are worse that light. But the
    fact is that worldwide, only about 10% of coffee beans produced
    are of "excellent" quality. The other 90% are good, average or
    poor. Dark roasting disguises this inconvenient fact while
    marketing converts it into a benefit. So it goes.

3. Decaf is bad for you.
    This myth arises because when decaffeinated coffee was first
    developed the caffeine was chemically removed using benzene,
    a petrochemical now known to be carcinogenic. This is no
    longer the case. Manufacturers now use water, methylene
    chloride and ethyl acetate in vastly smaller amounts.

4. Coffee is bad for your heart.
    While unsure what the exact mechanism of action may be,
    recent reviews of multiple studies of coffee consumption have
    reached the exact opposite conclusion. Otherwise healthy
    people who consume a moderate amount of coffee -  3 to 5
    cups a day - have a 15% lower risk of a cardiovascular event
    than non-coffee drinkers.

5. Coffee will help you lose weight.
    The idea that caffeine aids in weight loss comes mostly from
    (surprise!) manufacturers of weight loss supplements. There
    are no independent clinical studies that show any relationship
    at all between weight loss and caffeine (let alone coffee)
    consumption.

The takeaway? Consumed in moderate amounts, coffee is not bad for you and in fact may have some small health benefits. Dark or light roast, regular or decaf seems to make no difference, so choose the kind you like and enjoy it.