What is Black Coffee? (Explained)

If you want to know what black coffee is, you’re in the right place. From the traditional espressos and lattes, the working public, especially the health-conscious, is now starting to lean towards the consumption of black coffee. However, all this hype has left you wondering what the magic in black coffee is.

Black coffee is what some people would identify as simple coffee. This identification is because black coffee is a type of coffee that does not contain any additives like sugar, milk, cream, and all those other additives one might associate with other coffee drinks.

This article will explore the wonders of black coffee, the implications of drinking it, its history, and the good news behind it. In addition to that, we will try to answer the question, “What is black coffee?”

The (Not so Dark) Backstory of Black Coffee: What is Black Coffee?

Black coffee was not the drink we know of today. In fact, black was very different, regarded as no more than a tribal drink that an ethnic group from Africa uses. Please make no mistake, tribal and cultural drinks are a wonder to behold, but it is not near the global drink storm that we know of and recognize today.

So precisely, what was black coffee? Originating in Ethiopia, coffee was not recognized as an edible drink but was acknowledged as something no more than a boring wild plant in a sea of fruits and vegetables.

However, a story once goes that the energetic history of coffee once began when a Kaldi goat herder observed his goat eating the coffee plant only to find his goat relentless and restless.

After that, the goat herder reported it to the local monastery, to which monks acknowledged coffee as a valuable tool to help them retain focus during the long hours of prayer.

The coffee served back then was now the coffee we recognize as black coffee. Pure, unadulterated, and authentic, black coffee was not something people back then drank to enjoy, but they drank it to be energetic.

Although some people still think of coffee as an energy drink, in the modern-day, coffee is a drink people enjoy indulging in, adding additives such as sugar and milk to increase palatability.

What happens if we drink black coffee daily?

Despite its highly alluring aroma, black coffee did not have a beautiful scent to the health-conscious due to its reported adverse effects. The latter have condemned black coffee due to its reputation of “forcing” the human body to stay awake and active.

These beliefs have made people think twice and thrice again before drinking nature’s black coffee gift.

Indeed, many people still think that drinking black coffee every single day is still a harmful practice. Playing as the devil’s advocate, we came here to discuss the detrimental effects of drinking black coffee daily in the mission to answer the question, “What are the side effects of drinking coffee?”

However, later on, we will discuss the excellent health benefits of drinking black coffee. 

Because black coffee is used concurrently under less than suitable working conditions, it is often associated with increased stress and anxiety.

Drinking black coffee daily, especially in high amounts, can result in heart palpitations– either with the effect of increased or decreased heart rate and can also fuel the stress and anxiety variable. 

The overconsumption of black coffee, especially during bloodshot hours, can result in less than ideal sleeping conditions. In addition, this abuse of substances can result in restlessness and insomnia due to coffee’s stimulating properties.

Coffee is known as an adenosine receptor antagonist. This is because it blocks the adenosine receptors inside the brain from detecting adenosine, the hormone responsible for making us sleepy, especially at the end of the day.

There is another little-known side effect of coffee, and that is its property of being an inhibitor. What is an inhibitor, you might ask? Well, an inhibitor is any substance that limits the absorption of a nutrient or nutrients.

An inhibitor can be used for health-related purposes, especially when someone is undergoing a substance overdose or anything related to overconsumption.

However, most of the time, being an inhibitor is not considered relatively good. For example, especially right after a meal, coffee can reduce the absorption of some nutrients by up to fifty percent!

To answer the question: “What is black coffee?” Black coffee is an inhibitor, an anxiety-inducing, stress-increasing, insomnia-causing drink.

However, we must remember that those are only the detrimental health-related effects of black coffee and do not include the health benefits of drinking black coffee. Speaking of health, in the next section, we will be talking about the good news. 

The Good News: The health benefits of drinking black coffee (The health drink)

Answering the question “What is black coffee” is complicated and can be answered by many different statements. However, it is essential to note that black coffee can be more than just a concoction and an energy drink.

Today, we will conduct a thorough discussion on coffee as a health drink, tackling the misconceptions and the truth behind the health benefits of drinking black coffee.

1. Brain Drink

We have always heard of food products considered brain food, such as fatty fish, broccoli, and pumpkin seeds, especially since they have a reputation for increasing intellectual ability. However, do you know that one of the most consumed and bought brain food (or brain drink) is coffee?

Yes, that is true! Coffee is considered a brain food to increase alertness, foster sharpened concentration, improve mood, and more. All of these variables together foster enhanced cognitive functioning. Moreover, coffee can also decrease the risk of brain-related diseases with a specific relationship to memory.

According to the numbers, coffee can decrease the risk of Dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease by sixty to sixty-five percent. The reasoning behind this shocking decrease in risk stems from the fact that black coffee allows the brain to stay proactive at even idle times, especially in the morning.

In theory, this increased mental exercise boosts memory power and results in more active brain cells and brain nerves, keeping dementia, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s checked. So what exactly is black coffee? Well, one of the answers is that black coffee is a brain drink!

2. A liver lover, sugar power

Black coffee is more than just a brain drink. Despite popular belief, black coffee reduces the risk of diabetes, which can result in organ damage and heart diseases. This phenomenon has shown to be more predominant in people who had drunk more than two cups of coffee per day, including caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee. 

In the past decades, another fascinating discovery made by researchers was that black coffee decreased your risk of developing liver-related diseases such as liver cancer, fatty liver disease, hepatitis, liver cancer, and alcoholic cirrhosis.

According to the said studies, those drinking four or more cups of coffee a day lowered their risk by up to eighty percent. According to the researchers, this resulted from the coffee’s ability to reduce the concentration of harmful liver enzymes in the blood.

Other cited benefits to drinking black coffee were weight loss, high antioxidant levels, cancer risk reduction, and more. So really, “What is black coffee?” Well, through this analysis, we can conclude that black coffee is a healthy drink.

Three Frequently Asked Questions About Black Coffee

How many cups of black coffee is a day healthy?

According to multiple studies, up to four cups of black coffee per day is considered healthy.

Is instant black coffee or brewed black coffee healthier?

The differences in nutritional content between instant black coffee and brewed black coffee are minuscule, although instant black coffee contains lesser amounts of caffeine.

Can black coffee prevent pregnancy?

Beware of random myths, whether it may be from the internet or your neighborhood gossip. Currently, no solid evidence indicates black coffee as a substance that can prevent pregnancy, ever more so replace your birth control pills.