Thursday, February 1, 2018

Monday, January 29, 2018

Decaffeinated - Not Such a Good Choice

Some of you will know that I had to give up caffeine about a year ago because I discovered I was sensitive to it and it was the cause of chronic indigestion. Having given it up I thought everything was fine, no more indigestion and I had found some decaf products I was perfectly happy with.

That is until someone mentioned to me that certain methods of decaffeination were actually harmful to health. I took this initially with a pinch of salt but decided to research it for myself anyway. Wikipedia was most helpful on this listing all the various ways caffeine could be extracted from tea and coffee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decaffeination and true enough there were some very bad ways as well as healthy ways such as the Swiss Water Process.


Next I decided to look at the labels on my products. For instant coffee I use Nescafé Gold Blend Decaf and I was very relieved to see they proudly claim to use the water process for removing the caffeine from their beans. Full marks to Nescafé but I only have one cup a day of that so it wasn't the most important. In the evenings after my main meal I have a cup of ground coffee and for that I use Lavazza Decaffeinated Caffe Espresso. There was nothing on the label about the decaffeination process and nothing on their web site.


The most important drink for me however, is tea. I drink 6 mugs of tea a day, two mugs at a time made from 1 bag so 3 tea bags a day. The brand I used was PG Tips Decaf as that had the best flavour, hardly any difference from the non decaf version. Once again there was nothing on the packet to say how the tea was decaffeinated and nothing on their web site.

This blogpost first appeared here:  http://sallys-site.blogspot.com

Related Articles:
http://top-weightloss-site.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-functional-coffee-can-help-you.html

https://thehealth-site.blogspot.com/2017/08/regular-coffee-or-decaf-7-advantages.html