Facts About Coffee

1. Coffee is the world's most widely taken legal drug, and second-most-traded legal commodity, after petroleum.
2. In various times, coffee has been considered both an aphrodisiac and a sex inhibitor.
3. 500 billion cups of coffee a year are consumed around the world, half of them at breakfast.
4. Coffee is a green bean hidden in the red cherry of the coffee tree. Coffee beans are actually berries.
5. The coffee-break was an advertising ploy to sell more coffee.
6. Most coffee farmers have never tasted their own coffee.
7. 27% of US coffee drinkers and 43% of German drinkers add a sweetener to their coffee
8. The world's largest coffee producer is Brazil with over 3,970 million coffee trees.
9. The two main types of coffee trees, Arabica and Robusta, can produce crops for 20 - 30 years under proper conditions and care.
10. Over 53 countries grow coffee worldwide, but all of them lie along the equator between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.
11. With the exception of Hawaii and Puerto Rico, no coffee is grown in the US or its territories.
12. Cowboys made their coffee by putting ground coffee into a clean sock, immersing it in cold water and heating it over a campfire. When ready, they would pour the coffee into tin cups and drink it.
13. Both the American Revolution and the French Revolution were born in coffee houses.
14. Turkish bridegrooms were once required to make a promise during their wedding ceremonies to always provide their new wives with coffee. If they failed to do so, it was grounds for divorce (pardon the pun).
15. Espresso has about 1/3 of the caffeine of a regular cup of coffee.
16. One coffee bush yields slightly less than one pound of coffee per year.
17. Coffee ripens unevenly, hence gourmet and specialty coffee must be picked by hand.
18. Over 36 hands touch every coffee bean as it goes through more than 23 steps to get from the bush to your cup.
19. Over 25 million people worldwide are completely dependent on coffee for their income. More than 125 million are dependent on coffee in some way.
20. For every pound of gourmet coffee sold, a coffee farmer may receive between 12 and 25 cents. Only one cent of the price of a $2 cup of coffee goes to the grower.