Credit: Shutterstock
I will tell you a secret: I love coffee makers. Yes, I said coffee makers and not coffee. I like coffee too, obviously, but I like coffee in the same way that I enjoy deer meat while I really love my hunting rifles. I have a lot of coffee makers, but only four are allowed on the counter at any given time, yet I never write about coffee makers. They are an engineering tool and the American Council on Science and Health is instead about science and health.
Coffee, though, yeah, I write about that plenty. Because as with a lot of other consumer goods, the less-informed public has been duped by the $100 billion Big Organic industry into overpaying for an intellectual placebo when it comes to a delicious morning brew.
Organic hype is so common, and so pervasive, that the folks at Bean Box, self-described "organic-produce-consuming-vegetarian Pacific Northwesterners" (translation for the evidence-based world: anti-science hippies) are a welcome surprise because they are defying the well-oiled publicity machine of the organic industry and bringing some truth about coffee.
To people in science, organic coffee always seemed a little silly. Not as silly as an organic pineapple or some all of the other nonsense Environmental Working Group has promoted about food, but still pretty silly, because you don't eat coffee beans any more than you eat the shell of a pineapple, and by the time you do get to the consumable part, whether or not the toxic pesticide on the plant was an organic one or a synthetic one has ceased to be relevant to anyone who knows 8th grade chemistry.
In a recent post, Ryan Fritzky addressed some facts and myths about organic coffee claims. I won't spoil the plot for you, you should go read it in order to support more evidence-based articles from a food segment that traditionally preys on making sure its customers know little about science (we mean you and your "evaporated cane juice", Whole Foods) but I will tell you he debunks claims that organic coffee has no pesticides or that it is better coffee.
What is the only real difference? To abide by the paperwork a roaster filled out and attached with their check in order to get that organic sticker, they have to roast the coffee in a machine separate from conventional coffees.
In other words, it is just a different process, like kosher food or any other food process - there is no difference in the food itself.
We welcome you to the world of fact-based food claims, Bean Box. Here is hoping Natural Resources Defense Council doesn't turn their $100 million company's public relations thugs on you over it.
