To enjoy a healthy and delicious coffee, you need to choose defective beans carefully. If it rots or is eaten by insects, it creates substances that should not be found in coffee, which are unpleasant and not good for the body. It is especially alarming to see green coffee beans with dark blue stains here and there due to bacterial or fungal infections. Because toxins often appear blue, humans have evolved to suppress their appetite for blue foods.
Since most of the toxins disappear during roasting at about 200 degrees for about 10 minutes, we are not very aware of the ‘warning’ that color gives in relation to coffee drinks ‘. Thanks to the development of science and technology, the social system played a role that prevented harmful foods from entering everyday life easily.
Perhaps because of this, blue is often treated as a valuable color in coffee. Fresh coffee beans are compared to emerald gems because a blue glow seems to come from within. ‘Esmeralda’ was the name of the Panamanian coffee farm that made the Gesha variety known around the world. This is the Spanish word for emerald.
A photo of a famous franchise coffee shop featuring a drink made with blue concentrate. The dark blue color of the cup where the drink was poured is clear. Capture Instagram
In 1683, an army of 300,000 Ottoman Turks laid siege to the Habsburg city of Vienna, but they quickly retreated due to the connection of the Holy Alliance of Poland and Lithuania. The green coffee beans were divided into bottles and lined in the cafe so they wouldn’t get wet, because they looked blue when they looked at them from a distance.
New values were published in several papers that revealed the effect of blue on human consciousness and emotion. Exposure to blue activates the amygdala, which is associated with emotional regulation, and the hypothalamus, which is important for regulating physical activities, encouraging rational judgment. In color psychology, ‘blue’ is seen as a color that promotes calm and peaceful feelings. Since stress or anxiety causes an increase in cravings, the sense of stability that blue brings helps curb cravings.
This ‘blue counterattack’ that is taking place in food culture can be seen in the beverage sector. Thanks to the learning effect that “blue is safe,” blue has now become a buzzword in the summer beverage market, symbolizing refreshment, cooling and hydration. By using colors that have long been taboo in food, you can enjoy the attention-grabbing effect as a bonus.
Among the most popular blue drinks in the summer is ‘Blue Curacao’. The glaze was made using ‘Laraha oranges’, which are difficult to eat raw because of their strong bitter taste, and then added a blue color. In 1961, the movie ‘Blue Hawaii’ with Elvis Presley became very popular, and the blue drink became synonymous with luxury and romance.
The reason that the blue color is revealed through a liqueur rather than adding color directly to the drink is not just for style or taste. The tar-based blue dye commonly used in coffee shops is controversial because it is synthesized by extracting benzene or naphthalene from coal tar. In particular, intake and use is restricted in children due to its harmful effects, such as the risk of causing hyperactivity.
Recently, a large franchise coffee shop that boasted that it had earned tens of billions in operating profit as a result of spending large sums of money to use celebrities as models went bankrupt. involved in controversy over the dangers of selling drinks containing a thick blue dye to children. . They themselves must explain the accusation that they “used cheap materials to raise money for advertising.”
Park Young-soon, coffee humanities columnist
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