What is instant coffee?

More and more friends like to drink freshly ground coffee, and instant coffee is the main force.

A friend often asks me, which kind of convenience food is delicious? Will drinking fast food be despised? Will it be okay if I drink expired instant coffee?

It is not difficult to find that there are many kinds of instant coffee, including milk coffee, Hainan coconut coffee, espresso coffee, Colombian coffee, Brazilian coffee, men's coffee, women's coffee and blue mountain coffee.

Is it instant coffee or not? Can I drink?

Instant coffee is not coffee.

"Instant coffee" is not generally recognized by the traditional coffee industry.

Coffee, like tea in China, is a part of plants. It is picked and baked manually, then filtered or brewed with boiling water to make delicious, nutritious and healthy drinks.

And instant ones? You can Baidu it. As far as the instant production technology is concerned, it is completely an artificial drink synthesized by chemicals. There are all kinds of chemicals that are harmful to human body.

We originally wanted to have a cup of coffee to refresh ourselves. Even if it is not very delicate and delicious coffee, it will not cause any harm to the body as long as it is not drunk in excess, but what impact does instant coffee have on human health? I have collected some contents about fast food. Let's have a look.

Production of instant coffee

Because instant coffee often only extracts caffeine from coffee beans, in order to reduce costs, most coffee producers will choose Robusta species with poor quality, high yield and low price. This kind of coffee bean is mostly produced in Viet Nam, China, Hainan, Yunnan, Africa and other countries.

Instant coffee is made by extracting effective components from Robusta coffee beans used as industrial raw materials and drying them. In this process, some aromatic substances will inevitably be lost, which makes the flavor and taste of the finished product not as rich and pure as the coffee directly fried and ground.

Its production process is generally: pretreatment → roasting → grinding → extraction → concentration → drying.

Wherein the pretreatment is to remove impurities.

During the baking process, the contents of coffee beans will undergo complex physical and chemical reactions to form unique coffee aroma substances. After grinding, the effective components in coffee are extracted into water at a certain temperature and pressure.

Through vacuum concentration, the drying process is convenient.

Drying is the forming process of instant coffee powder, and it is also the process that has the greatest influence on the quality of coffee powder during processing. At present, spray drying method is generally used, but because of its strong heat sensitivity, the aroma of coffee is easy to volatilize at higher drying temperature (it has been volatilized during extraction and concentration), which is the main reason why instant coffee does not have the rich aroma of fried coffee.

The above is just the production process, and the aroma has been basically lost in many high-temperature operating environments. So how to make up for it? There's no other way than adding artificial spices, is there? The chemical components added in the production process are not just flavors. You can look at the ingredient list on the instant package, but it is still marked. What is not marked is the "trade secret" of others.

Drinking fast food often is harmful to your health.

1, carcinogen acrylamide

In the process of concentration and drying, instant coffee will produce a large amount of acrylamide after high temperature treatment. According to the sampling data of American Food and Drug Administration, the acrylamide content of instant coffee powder is as high as 458ppb, while the acrylamide content of freshly ground coffee is only about 10ppb.

In 2005, the Ministry of Health announced that the additive of instant coffee contained acrylamide, a carcinogen. According to the announcement, acrylamide is a chemical substance and a raw material for the production of polyacrylamide, which can be used for industrial purposes such as sewage purification. The results of animal experiments show that acrylamide is a possible carcinogen. Epidemiological observation of occupational exposed population shows that long-term low-dose exposure to acrylamide can cause drowsiness, mood and memory changes, hallucinations and tremors, accompanied by peripheral neuropathy (glove feeling, sweating and muscle weakness).

The foods with high acrylamide content are potato fried food, grain fried food, grain baked food and instant coffee in turn. For the sake of human health, these foods should be avoided as much as possible.

2. Hydrogenated vegetable oils and trans fatty acids

What do you often drink? Three in one, instant cappuccino, and so on. Let's take a look at the ingredient list of Nestle and Maxwell coffee, and see if they both contain "hydrogenated oil", which is euphemistically called "edible vegetable hydrogenated oil".

Different from other edible fats in the diet, trans fats are harmful to health and are unnecessary nutrients for the human body. Eating trans fats will increase the risk of coronary heart disease, because it can increase low-density lipoprotein and decrease high-density lipoprotein. The liver cannot metabolize trans fat, which is also one of the important reasons for hyperlipidemia and fatty liver. Health authorities all over the world recommend reducing trans fat intake as much as possible. It is generally believed that partially hydrogenated vegetable oil poses a greater risk to health than pure natural vegetable oil.

In the dietary guidelines published in August 2004, the United States suggested that the daily intake of trans fatty acids should be lower than 1% of total energy. Excessive trans fatty acids are harmful to cardiovascular and cerebrovascular systems.

In the report "Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases: Implementing a Global Strategy", the World Health Organization has repeatedly reiterated the need to gradually eliminate trans fatty acids. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization suggest that the diet should contain only a very small amount of trans fat, which is lower than the daily calorie intake of 1%. For an adult who consumes 2000 calories a day, this amount is equivalent to no more than 2g a day.

In 2006, the New England Journal of Medicine published a summary report on trans fats, pointing out that as long as the intake of trans fats is extremely low, the risk of coronary heart disease will greatly increase. The study shows that 30,000 to/kloc-0,000 people in the United States die of heart disease every year, which can be attributed to eating trans fats.

Generally, food labels on food packaging will list cocoa butter substitutes, vegetable butter (margarine and margarine), hydrogenated vegetable oil, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, hydrogenated fat, refined vegetable oil, hydrogenated vegetable oil, hydrogenated palm oil, solid vegetable oil, ghee and artificial ghee.