Coffee is increasingly at risk from the climate crisis, and corporate-driven incremental change won’t save it. The theory of degrowth offers hope for a better world and a fairer coffee industry.
For paid subscribers: Coffee is increasingly used to burnish the United Arab Emirates’ international image. Now it is being supercharged by merging with the popularity of the Dubai chocolate trend.
It was a bit of a slow week for coffee news, but I somehow still managed to write a whole roundup. Here’s what happened:
A California Assembly member introduced new legislation that would ban coffee decaffeinated using methylene chloride. The FDA has said that the health risks from decaffeinated coffee using methylene chloride are so low “as to be essentially non-existent”, but that hasn’t stopped a food safety nonprofit from pushing for the ban.
Keurig will introduce a plastic-free coffee pod—well, it’s more of a puck—as part of what its CEO calls “our ambitious agenda [which] reflects our commitment to providing variety, quality, value, and sustainability to the 45 million North American coffee consumers who currently use Keurig brewers.” Those 45 million people will need an entirely new machine in order to use the new K-Rounds, so what happens to all those old brewers?
Coffee has a complicated relationship with migraines—does it cause them? Cure them? Science doesn’t know! Things are no clearer despite two new studies investigating the subject.
I'm a coffee writer and creator of The Pourover. Based in Scotland, I have over a decade of experience in the specialty coffee industry. Ask me about coffeewashing. It's pronounced Fin (he/him)
Fionn Pooler
