Coffee, chocolate, milk, wine–what’s good, what’s bad

By: Cory Quirino
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Q: Perhaps I am addicted to coffee. I can’t seem to start my day without my usual two-cup regimen. By 5 p.m., I would have consumed 6 cups. What should I do?

A: Do you know that the usual daily maximum for coffee is three cups? You are way over your limit. Think about this—if you need a stimulant to give you a quick pick-up, then most probably your fat-burning system that generates energy may not be working well.

Chances are you may not be addicted to coffee as you are to caffeine. Too much caffeine can affect the adrenal, liver and nervous system. A quick test is to observe your hands if they shake involuntarily, or an elevated pulse with mild heart palpitations.

Cut back now. Alternate your coffee excesses with green or black tea. They both have caffeine, but contain as well antioxidants and phtyonutrients. If you are strict about your health, take organic tea or coffee. If you are sensitive to caffeine but enjoy coffee, try whole-bean coffees that are water-processed. About 1/3 of the caffeine remains. There is, of course, always decaf coffee and tea. But if you wish to avoid caffeine altogether, substitute with herbal teas.

Here’s a tea booster:

Lemongrass upper: Take 2 stalks of fresh lemongrass (they grow wild in the garden). Tie them together. Place in a pot of boiling water. Allow to simmer for 3 minutes. Drink up and enjoy its golden goodness and pungent aroma.

Optional: Raw wild honey—1 tsp

I am a confessed chocoholic. Is this good or bad?

It’s very good if you avoid confections laced with excessive sugar. There is growing evidence that coco is a potent therapeutic food. Eating this treat will do more than just satisfy the most powerful of cravings.

Cocoa may improve your health. It helps lower blood pressure and improves cardiovascular health. Flavorols found in cocoa, purple grape juice and tea directly act on the processing of nitric oxide. Polypherols in cocoa, just like in red wine, provide maximum protection against heart disease.

However, cocoa should be taken thick and diluted with minimal water and sugar in order to derive its optimal benefits. Cocoa found in candy bars is loaded with sugar and additives.

Make it a habit to have a cup of cocoa once daily. It should minimize your craving for candy bars. But if you cannot help yourself, go for dark chocolate instead of the milk-choco variety, because the former’s oxygen-radical value is higher.

Because they are havens of health, I welcome choco-inspired cafés like Tablea in Cebu, and Xocolat, Chocolate de Batirol and Cacao in Serendra, Global City. Here’s a cup of cocoa for your well-being!

Every time I drink milk, I experience stomach discomfort. Why is that?

It’s true, milk is a good source of calcium and many have lived with the habit of drinking milk with great satisfaction. However, there are those who are lactose-intolerant. In certain people, milk can cause gastrointestinal stress, skin problems and a compromised immune system.

Cow’s milk is 80-percent casein and 20-percent whey. Human milk is the reverse—20-percent casein and 80-percent whey. Any milk allergy means a sensitivity to casein. Lactose intolerance is sensitivity to milk sugar. Those who are lactose-intolerant lack an enzyme called lactase to digest lactose.

If you have problems with cow’s milk, switch to goat and sheep milk whose composition and nutrient content are closer to human milk.

At the end of the day, I find that a glass of wine is soothing to my spirits. Is this a good habit?

Truth be told, wine is not only the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world, but also an ancient medicinal remedy. Wine dates back to more than 6,000 years, and its use has been hailed by doctors, poets and the public in general.

There is nothing wrong with having a wine-drinking habit for as long as you are faithful to the maximum code—two glasses for men, one glass for women.

Know the following: Drinking wine with meals can help the digestive process. (This is because the PH level of wine is low just like the stomach.) Wine taken in moderation can significantly lower the risk of coronary heart disease.

Some experts believe that people who drink one to two glasses of wine or any alcoholic beverage a day are more likely to extend their life expectancy by three to four years, as compared to those who don’t drink.

Red wine may be a powerful cancer inhibitor. Grape skins are used to make red wine (unlike white wine), where resveratrol is rich.

Wine contains vitamin B1, B2, B6, niacin and iron.
Warning: Wine should not be taken with other drugs or by pregnant women and people with health conditions. And never drive under the influence of alcohol, as it impairs your senses.

Beauty aid

If you run out of astringent, get 1 tsp of white wine and dip a small piece of cotton ball in it. Lightly wipe the grime off your face. Rinse after. It works wonders!

Affirm today: “I am in the best of spirits!”

Love and light!

Breeding civet cats for coffee

By Maurice Malanes Inquirer Northern Luzon BY OCTOBER, some of the Arabica coffee beans in Apollo Oduña’s two-hectare farm will start turning cherry-red, the right color showing the perfect timing to gather the priced product . But Oduña won’t employ people to gather the ripe beans. He has 85 civet cats to do the harvesting. The civet cats, locally called “motit,” eat a mixed diet of insects, small mammals and fruits, along with the softer outer part of coffee cherries. But they don’t digest the inner beans, excreting them instead still covered in some inner layers of the cherries. Oduña’s helpers will then gather the excreted, undigested and intact coffee beans, which they wash, dry and process into one of the most expensive and sought-after coffee varieties in the world. To ensure top quality, coffee experts advise that farmers should harvest only the perfectly ripe, cherry-red coffee beans and should not mix the underripe or the overripe. Civet cats do exactly that. “In a coffee branch, they (civet cats) just pick the juicy, cherry-red beans in the middle of the branch,” says Oduña. New business ideas Oduña’s romance with civet coffee and civet cats began in 2000. As a former antique furniture trader, Oduña had been frequenting Metro Manila, exhibiting his Ifugao-designed furniture items at trade fair venues, including the World Trade Center there. One time, at a coffee shop in Makati City, a P360 cup of “civet coffee” on the menu aroused the furniture trader’s curiosity. He ordered one and, to his surprise, the highly priced brew came in a small cup, not in a mug as he had expected. There must be gold in this kind of coffee, he thought. So he searched the Internet and found that Indonesian farmers have been trading “kopi luwak” or civet coffee. With the growing difficulty in searching for timber for his furniture business, Oduña reckoned that it was time for a business shift. From some earnings, he invested on a two-hectare upland property in Benguet. He planted more than 1,000 seedlings of Arabica coffee in 2001, along with banana and some fruit-bearing trees. He later fenced off the farm and, beginning 2005, he placed there a couple of civet cats, which he got from Igorot hunters. Taking pity Oduña’s first civet cat was a female, which a Kalinga farmer gave him. While traveling to Kalinga to buy civet coffee droppings, he saw a caged civet cat with a severely injured foreleg at the farmer’s house. He took pity on the animal, which the farmer gave to him. He nursed and fed the animal for months until it recovered. Many Igorot people hunt civet cats, which some consider pests in their farms, but Oduña convinced some of them to either sell or give to him those they trap. He eventually bought a male to accompany the first he had. The female soon gave birth to three kittens. As word spread that Oduña was interested in civet cats, Igorot farmers and hunters from various areas of the Cordillera and its borders with the Ilocos would bring and sell to him their hunt. “Some hunters would bring injured civets, but I would still take them, treating their wounds and feeding them with fruits and occasionally some meat to regain their health,” says Oduña, a native of Kiangan, Ifugao. The civet cats in Oduña’s farm came from Kalinga, Ifugao, Benguet and La Union. Besides, these are kittens, which are the products of breeding in the farm. He is so far the first Filipino to breed civet cats in a farm. A few are breeding the animal in cages, but not in a farm. Instant civet coffee Since 2007, Oduña and his aides have been collecting less than 100 kilograms of beans during the harvest season from October to April. The volume later increased to 262 kg last year. After being cleaned, dried and roasted the traditional way by an Ibaloi, Oduña brings the beans to Metro Manila for grinding and packaging. As an innovation, Oduña experimented and succeeded in packaging the finished product in tea bags mixed with dried and ground stevia, an herbal sweetener friendly even to diabetics. Endemic to Paraguay, stevia is a shrub, which Oduña has also grown in his farm. Although 10 times sweeter than sugar from sugarcane, stevia is recommended not only for diabetics but also for hypertensives and health buffs because of its reported antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial qualities. Oduña’s civet coffee products are available in tea bags. A bag contains 10 grams of ground coffee and two grams of stevia, which is then sealed in a foil. Marketed under “Hagiyo! Philippine Civet Coffee,” each box contains 10 sealed bags. “Hagiyo” is an Ifugao term for “have a long and happy life.” Why in teabags? “Because coffee should not be boiled, and this is convenient for working people who can have instant quality coffee,” Oduña said. With a “Hagiyo! Brew” coffee shop at the ground of the provincial capitol in La Trinidad, Oduña is now looking forward to helping revive indigenous and organic Igorot snacks and dishes to go with his instant brew. When in Cebu City, please visit gregmelep.com for your real estate and retirement needs. Published in Philippine Daily Inquirer September 14, 2010.

Coffee for a Cause

By Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
Philippine Daily Inquirer

“BLENDING indigenous coffee with passion for service.”

That’s what the AdvoCafé signage so unabashedly says. As in, who says coffee and advocacy can’t mix?

Peasants and princes, intellectuals and poseurs, artists and con artists, peaceniks and anarchists, techies and technocrats, sinners and saints, the bourgeois and the great unwashed – they have coffee stories and a need to have a caffeine fix in varying degrees to make it through the day or night. Or a desire to simply sit, sip, smell and enjoy the heady ancient brew while contemplating life or watching the world go by.

A new coffee place on the block is AdvoCafé, “a non-profit social enterprise in support of the indigenous people’s (IP) efforts for sustainable living.”

The neo-ethnic ambiance and the vision-mission statements on the café’s walls say it all. Indeed, it is a cool hang-out, especially for those who wear their advocacy on their sleeve or want to drink to it with their coffee or salabat (ginger brew). The place also hopes to raise people’s consciousness about indigenous people, sustainable living and fair trade.

Founded by 2004 Ramon Magsaysay (RM) Awardee for Emergent Leadership Benjamin “Benjie” Abadiano, the little café (all of 46 square meters) opened on June 28. AdvoCafé is on the ground floor of the RM building Annex, almost in front of the Diamond Hotel lobby on Quintos Street corner M.H. del Pilar in Malate, Manila.

Days before the formal opening, coffee lovers already came in droves to savor the cheap coffee and gawk at the interiors. “We could hardly cope,” exclaims Abadiano who lost many unwanted pounds during the café’s construction and while preparing for its opening. Employees of nearby offices had been eagerly waiting, often asking when AdvoCafé’s doors would open.

AdvoCafé, Abadiano says, offers mostly all-natural, all-organic products at very reasonable and fair prices. The signature health food and drinks include coffee (produced mostly by the IP in different parts of the country like Mindoro and the Cordillera), herbal tea, natural juices, jams and jellies, honey, native delicacies and pastries. Each item, Abadiano adds, is a product of research and experimentation to ensure quality.

So, what to order and for how much? Corn coffee (P20), brewed (P35), iced (P45), cappuccino (P45), café latte (P45). Mocha java, mochaccino, vanilla and chocolate (all at P79). Calamansi juice and hibiscus (gumamela) nectar (P25). Biya meal and longganisa meal (P59). Pan de sal with filling (P20). They also have plain malunggay pan de sal, cakes, cookies and pastries. (The carrot cake is great!) By now, they should be offering pasta meals.

One can also buy handicraft items made by the IP. These include intricately woven baskets and cloth, musical instruments, decorative items, ornaments and accessories. Or you might want to take home an AdvoCafé mug.

But AdvoCafé is a lot more than just cups of indigenous coffee and crafts. One hundred percent of the café’s net profit will support initiatives such as: partnership and capability building for farmers, sustainable livelihood, education for children and youth and environment concerns such as climate change adaptation. Fair trade is a basic and fundamental principle in AdvoCafé’s operations.

AdvoCafe was an idea waiting to be born, but the concept had to undergo fine-tuning to the tiniest detail. It also had a serendipitous beginning. Abadiano was picking up the coffee machines and baking equipment (flour and ingredients included) that were being donated by a generous couple when someone who happened by heard their conversation. The man, a young Hong Kong Chinese entrepreneur who studied in the Philippines and is married to a Filipina, instantly offered his former restaurant’s furniture and other stuff. (He was going into another line of business.)

And so one could say that AdvoCafé is indeed a product of many hearts, minds and hands. Supporting AdvoCafé are the RM Awards Foundation, Assisi Foundation (of which Abadiano is president), Pamulaan Center for Indigenous People’s Education in Davao (which Abadiano founded and which graduated its first college batch this year), Tugdaan Mangyan Center for Learning and Development in Mindoro (where Abadiano began his journey with the IP) and Ad’Laine Bakeshop.

Present at the opening ritual were IPs who offered a coffee plant and coffee beans alongside their non-IP counterparts. Assisi Foundation founder and chair, Ambassador Howard Dee, and Assisi vice-president Viel Aquino-Dee (sister of President Noynoy Aquino) untied the tinalak ribbon to mark the café’s opening. IPs in their tribal garb emceed the program.

Abadiano, 47, is a story in himself. A graduate of Xavier University, he fell in love with sociology and anthropology early on. He spent time in the Jesuit novitiate and did courses in philosophy at the Ateneo University but soon found the call of the lumad (indigenous people) irresistible. The epiphany he experienced while among the lumad set him off on a journey with them that continues to this day. (We had written about this in the Inquirer in 2003 and 2004.)

Abadiano was, for a time, in charge of the program for the IP and also coordinator of Tabang Mindanaw’s Integrated Return and Rehabilitation Program. He was instrumental in turning 47 communities in Maguindanao, Cotabato and Lanao del Sur into “sanctuaries of peace.”

Today, the advocacy continues. This time, there is coffee to go with it, and more. •