{"id":1181,"date":"2018-05-07T00:16:27","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T00:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/?p=1181"},"modified":"2018-05-07T00:16:27","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T00:16:27","slug":"the-true-value-of-coffee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/2018\/05\/07\/the-true-value-of-coffee\/","title":{"rendered":"The True Value of Coffee"},"content":{"rendered":"
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These are the different roasts that can result from the roasting process.<\/p><\/div>\n

Working as a barista for four years has made coffee an integral part of my life. I drink up to three cups per day, am knowledgeable about different roasts, and smell like it consistently. However, I haven\u2019t taken the time to explore where coffee beans originate from or how they are processed, even when the information is easily accessible. Instead, I get caught-up in my inherent \u201cneed\u201d for caffeine or how I can quickly explain fundamental characteristics of a certain roast to a customer. Being busy has prevented me from taking the time to reflect on the underlying processes that coffee beans undergo to reach my mug every morning.<\/a><\/p>\n

This became especially relevant when engaging in contemplative practices this quarter because I had to stop and take a few minutes to think about my relationship to food. The most impactful practice for me was examining the production of raisins, both by hand and machine. Harvesting raisins is labor and time intensive, and in order to increase efficiency, heavy machinery is primarily used. This reveals that something as simple as a dried grape can be an industrialized food, which ultimately helped me see the long food chain that extends from a raisin in my hand to a farm in California.<\/p>\n

Now, when I order coffee, I\u2019ve been more curious about where the coffee beans are sourced and how they are processed. Similar to the raisin, I\u2019ve found that harvesting coffee berries and producing the beans is also labor-intensive, with machinery being a dominant actor at every stage. Not only does this reveal that coffee is industrialized, but also how aspects like waste, oil, and virtual water are incorporated within the chain. Using contemplative practices has been useful in thinking about the negative and positive spillover effects of food and has allowed me to examine my own consumption in more depth.<\/p>\n

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Working as a barista for four years has made coffee an integral part of my life. I drink up to three cups per day, am knowledgeable about different roasts, and smell like it consistently. However, I haven\u2019t taken the time to explore where coffee beans originate from or how they are processed, even when the information is easily accessible. Instead,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":1184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,12],"tags":[123,127,124,126,125],"class_list":["post-1181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contemplative-practices","category-industrialized-food","tag-coffee","tag-contemplativepractice","tag-industrialfood","tag-personalconnection","tag-systems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1181"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1205,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions\/1205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}