WHY DO WE NOW DRINK LESS COFFEE?
For many years past it has been plainly apparent that there has been a decline in the consumption of coffee; and while the use of spirits, wine, tobacco, tea, and cocoa has considerably increased, that of coffee has fallen off to a considerable extent. Dr Wallace, F.R.S.E., in a paper read before the Society of Public Analysts, is of opinion that the people of this country are losing their taste for coffee because of the difficulty of obtaining it in a pure state. About the time when the consumption per head was highest, coffee began to be adulterated with chicory, and now this is done so universally, that many people prefer the mixture to pure coffee, and few know the taste of the genuine article.
When travelling on the continent, the tourist enjoys the fragrant cup; but the beverage supplied at the best hotels and restaurants in this country is not coffee, but a mixture of that substance with chicory, in the proportion of three-fourths to one-third of the whole, and sometimes more. As Dr Wallace correctly says, this substance may be described as chicory flavoured with coffee. Chicory being bitter, with three times the colouring power of coffee, gives it the appearance of great strength; but it should always be remembered that it contains no caffeine, and wants the exhilarating qualities for which good coffee is partaken. The sooner the public awakens to a sense of this fact, the better.
Pure coffee can be had; but it is only sold with a grudge, for the grocer has his chief profit in the chicory with which it is adulterated. To show where the profit lies, take the case of a particular coffee sold in tins, which contains one part of coffee to three parts of chicory, and is sold at one-and-fourpence per pound. The coffee in a pound of it costs, retail, say sevenpence, the chicory, say fourpence, tins, say threepence, profit twopence—total, one-and-fourpence. But the purchaser gets no value except the sevenpenceworth of coffee, the chicory only adding colour, bitterness, and body, so that he pays one-and-fourpence for sevenpenceworth of coffee.
Amongst the other substances used to adulterate coffee in order to yield a higher profit to the dealer, are burnt sugar or caramel, dried and roasted figs, dried dates, date-stones, decayed ships’ biscuits, beans, peas, acorns, malt, dandelion root, turnips, carrots, parsnips, and mangold-wurzel, all of which are roasted in imitation of coffee. There is little wonder, therefore, that coffee, which lends itself so easily to unprincipled adulteration, is becoming unpopular. According to Dr Wallace, the quantity used per head in 1843 was 1.1 lb., increasing up to 1848, when it was 1.37 lb. It has since slowly but steadily declined, especially since 1853, and is now only .89 lb.; a decrease since 1843 of nineteen per cent., and since 1853 of fifty-four per cent. About five pounds of tea per head are consumed to one of coffee. In France, with a heavier duty, the consumption of coffee is 3.23 lbs. a head; Germany and Holland, 5.3 lbs.; Switzerland, 6.68 lbs.; Italy, only 1.05 lb.; while Belgium is largest of all, being 9 lbs. a head. The total consumption in Europe is about four hundred thousand tons, of which Great Britain used fourteen thousand tons in 1880. In the same year, about six thousand tons of chicory were retained for home consumption, which is an index to the extent of the adulteration. When the public taste ceases to lend itself to coffee adulterated with chicory and other rubbish, and when folks have acquired the art of making it properly, then the beverage might take the high place in general estimation to which it is justly entitled.