10 facts about coffee you didn’t know

The next time you’re at your favourite coffee shop and you see someone nice, use these ten interesting coffee facts to break the ice:

1. Coffee is seen as an aphrodisiac. This is because it contains a high dose of caffeine and other alkaloids. Studies have shown that coffee can increase the stamina and length of intimate sessions.
2. Coffee has been a part of Arab culture for thousands of years. Yet, in the western world, it didn’t become part of the culture until 1500. Before that, priests believed that coffee was a drink of evil. Pope Clement VIII ended this myth by sipping a cup of coffee and then giving coffee his blessing.
3. Japan’s official coffee day is October 1.
4. A single hectare of coffee trees can yield ten thousand kilos of coffee cherries. Once ground or peeled, about two thousand kilos of coffee beans are left.
5. Forty-nine of the fifty American states do not harvest coffee. The only state that harvests coffee is Hawaii. In addition, the only US territory that harvests coffee in Puerto Rico.
6. Germany is the second largest coffee user in the world. Forty-three per cent of Germans add something sweet to their coffee, while only twenty-seven per cent of Americans (the most significant coffee users) add something sweet to their coffee.
7. The English word ‘coffee’ is derived from the Latin ‘Coffea’. That is the Latin name for tree species.
8. Each of the fifty-three countries that harvest coffee is located on the equator, between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.
9. People who buy their coffee at drive-through shops just before work spend an average of forty-five hours a year waiting in line for their coffee.
10. Petroleum is the only product that is traded more than coffee. The amount of coffee around the world is about six million tons.