Cuppa good health
One of the world’s foremost experts on coffee, entrepreneur and scientist Dr Ernesto Illy says coffee helps you live “better, healthier and longer.” Rajeev Nair met him in Dubai for an exclusive chat
Coffee, in marketing parlance, needs a bait. Vis-a-vis the cola giants, good ol’ coffee — despite its only marginally higher caffeine content in an Arabica espresso — has little allure.
No one tempts you to drink coffee. No one lures you to coffee shops. (And when they do, it is often for the wrong reasons: Cream, milk, ice and sandwiches — what have they got to do with coffee per se?)
To miss coffee, says Dr Ernesto Illy, 80, honorary chairman of Illycaffe, headquartered in Trieste, Italy, is to miss out on a “better, healthier and longer” life.
An entrepreneur and scientist, Dr Illy is the son of Hungarian World War I officer, Fransesco Illy, who went on to invent the automatic coffee machine, the predecessor of today’s espresso machines.
His company, Illycaffe, which sells a “distinct blend of 100 per cent Arabica coffee in some 70 countries,” also gave to the world, today’s Italian-style espresso coffee.
All over the world, customers sip some 5 million cups of Illy coffee every day according to modest estimates.
Dr Ernesto Illy, thus, represents the preference of these 5 million die-hard coffee enthusiasts. As a scientist, who devoted his entire life and career to promoting quality coffee, he is also the spokesman of a growing tribe of scientists, who believe that coffee had got a raw deal as a health beverage.
Recipient of Italy’s important honour, Cavaliere del Lavoro (Knight of Industry), Dr Illy has been chairman of the International Coffee Organisation Promotion Committee and the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee. Over many years of research, he has streamlined what it takes to make a perfect cup of espresso (see box).
In Dubai to underscore the importance of a healthy breakfast (with coffee, of course) to Grand Hyatt’s F&B team, Dr Illy’s joviality is infectious. Soft-spoken, affable and oh-so gracious, Dr Illy needs little prodding to talk about, what else, coffee. “I can skip lunch or dinner but not my breakfast,” he says. “The quality of the breakfast affects your whole day.” When travelling, his breakfast includes two double espresso; at home, he has two strong cups of tea from India and then, coffee, all day.
With his excellent academic track-record, it is only natural that Dr Illy reels out scientific facts, figures and terms. Yes, as a listener, you tend to get lost in the face of such torrential scientific talk, but the bottom line is rather straight-laced: Trust that mug of coffee. It isn’t harmful, when not in excess. It is even good remedy to beat two vile habits: Drug abuse and alcohol addiction.
Dr Illy says that his life is testimony to this theory, now endorsed by many scientific bodies.
Many years back, he had to remove his tonsils and the doctors gave a shot of morphine “enough to put a horse to sleep.” It had no effect on Dr Illy, who recalls that “it was horrible to remove your tonsils without an anaesthetic.”
Why didn’t the morphine work? That question taunted Dr Illy. Years later the scientific community (in which he too plays a key part) came up with the answer. The receptors in the brain that are blocked by the components in morphine are the same that are blocked by a component in caffeine — the “lactone of the caffeilquimic acid.” Due to many years of his coffee drinking, his neuro-receptors had become immune to morphine.
These studies are now being implemented to good use in Russia and the Nordic countries. In Norway, it has been proved that 64 per cent of an average adult’s antioxidant intake comes from coffee (antioxidants are proven to help mitigate the chances of heart disease and cancer).
Initial research on coffee, says Dr Illy, misled the public, more so because instrumentation techniques were not as fine tuned then as now. One scientist, who researched the impact of caffeine on human brain used 60 mgm per kilogram of body weight (while espresso’s caffeine content is hardly 1 to 2 mgm per kg of body weight). That was an alarmingly high level, which led him to the conclusion that coffee could be harmful to health.
Dr Illy recommends three to five cups of regular coffee per day, each containing about 100 mgm of caffeine per cup. It is metabolised in three hours in men; the metabolism is 25 per cent faster in women.
One cup of espresso coffee (brewed as listed in box), Dr Illy explains, has about 50 to 55 mgm of caffeine. This is quite close to the caffeine content in cola at about 46 mgm. Illycaffe uses Arabica beans for its coffee for the principal reason that its caffeine content is lower compared to Robusta coffee.
A perfect espresso cup comes from 50 Arabica beans, says Dr Illy. Naturally, it is important that each bean has a stringent quality standard. “We can ensure that only through an excellent relationship with farmers. We know majority of our farmers in India, Africa, Colombia and Brazil, personally.” Illy has also developed special machinery to identify and eliminate even a single defective bean.
Dr Illy believes that his contribution to coffee has been the “application of science to improve its quality.” It is a long chain of factors that govern the ultimate cup quality. “It starts the moment I decide to put the plant in a location because there is a strong link between the genome of the plant and the environment in which it lives,” explains Dr Illy.
From reducing the water content in the cherries to checking the blend to picking those vital 50 beans, the prefect cup goes through several environmental and technical processes. “There are over 2,000 components in coffee that give it the flavour,” says Dr Illy.
All scientific research on coffee has eventually focused on caffeine — “the prima donna,” according to Dr Illy. “In over 20 years, there have been 17,000 research papers on caffeine.”
Dr Illy says it is easy to try for oneself and realise why coffee is a cup that ticks. Place mugs of espresso, regular coffee, tea and cola. “The cola is sweet but you drink it and forget it, it has no after-taste; tea is rich in aroma but has little body and is low in taste; regular coffee does not have too much aroma — milk has already reduced its bitterness; and finally, there is the espresso which is rich in aroma and has a lasting impression of taste. It is a clear winner. With espresso, you cannot cheat on its flavour or taste.”
Dr Illy’s advise to qahwah drinkers is to make sure that it is made from finely ground beans, and preferably filtered, because the residue in qahwah has been identified as having a component that increases body cholesterol levels.
And finally, he is all too pleased to be in the region, that gave coffee its name, which according to Illy is a clear derivative of the Arabic word, qahwah, meaning “plant beverage,” and not necessarily connected to the birthplace of coffee, the Abyssinian region of Kaffa.
The perfect espresso
The rules for a perfect espresso using Illy coffee
* Water temperature should be 90°-95°C
* Coffee in cup temperature should be 80°-85°C
* Dosage should be 6-7 grams per espresso cup
* Volume in cup should be 30 ml
* Time extraction should be 25-30 seconds.
(Source: www.illy.com)
