Food Theory: Coffee, Science's MOST IMPORTANT Discovery!

ross we have bad news more bad news this really hasn't been my day or week or month or even your year ross we're kicking you out of the friends group and replacing you with sir isaac newton we met him here at the coffee house and he's better than you in like every possible way hello ross from your handshake i'm guessing you're a paleontologist yeah how'd you know soft handshake soft science [Laughter] could he be any better than ross hello internet welcome to food theater hold up uh they always spell it wrong much better welcome to food theory today we've brewed up an episode about coffee i've heard of it it's only western civilization's caffeinated beverage of choice that's all the world consumes an estimated 2.25 billion cups of coffee every day every day it's a hundred billion dollar a year industry sorry if it's too early to be getting pelted with coffee factoids but what can i say coffee is so hot right now where's my damn latte not that it's a new phenomenon or anything coffee's been hot for centuries ever since it started making its way out of ethiopia in the 1400s via trade routes and this is where today's theory comes into play on this timeline here you'll notice that coffee and coffee houses became popular in europe just before the enlightenment the age of reason this is when famous thinkers like isaac newton and john locke embraced the notion that science and reason could bring about happiness and progress the enlightenment gave us representative democracy it gave us newtonian physics it gave us separation of church and state and what brought about this pivotal defining era of western civilization well your history teacher will probably tell you that it's complicated after all check out all these movements and eras that laid the cultural and scientific groundwork in europe ahead of the enlightenment you have the renaissance the scientific revolution but i'm not here to untangle the complex web that's western civ in a 15 minute youtube video i'm here to suggest that for once just once it's not all that complicated all we gotta do is follow the food coffee and coffee houses caused the enlightenment and if you think a beverage can't change the very course of human history buckle up because it can do far more than that coffee can and has been changing our brain since its inception and at two and a quarter billion cups a day you better believe it's changing a whole lot of brains in our world right now you've heard it before you are what you eat well same goes double for what you drink before the enlightenment alcohol was western civilization's legal and readily available drug choice alcohol was everywhere sort of like in college except instead of getting an a on your astronomy paper on heliocentrism you got put on trial as a heretic and put under house arrest or you know burned at the stake and when i say that alcohol was the drug of choice i'm not joking around here until the 18th century rolled around it wasn't uncommon for people to drink beer almost continuously throughout the day all day every day people would straight up begin their day with something called beer soup move over wheaties i think we found ourselves the real breakfast champions some suggest that the reason for this was a matter of water purity because the water was so often polluted in those days distilled alcohol became the most reliable source of liquid refreshment now this water pollution theory is highly scrutinized as untrue but whatever the reason is around this time that coffee took over and westerners day-drinking hobby went the way of dinosaurs and feudalism and this shift in beverage had tremendous effects on western society for centuries the beverage of choice in europe had been alcohol a depressant but then coffee comes along and suddenly society finds itself inundated with caffeine a stimulant but why did this gigantic depressant-to-stimulant shift occur in the 17th century of all times after all coffee is a naturally occurring plant and humans have had alcohol at least since 7000 bc they can easily understand why a society would prefer a coffee lifestyle to a beer soup lifestyle but why didn't it happen any earlier like thousands and thousands of years earlier the answer is shockingly simple it took humans a ridiculous amount of time to discover that coffee beans could be roasted like an embarrassingly long time guys we didn't figure out how to roast coffee until the 1400s i mean come on humans figured out how to build rockets back in the 1200s yet we couldn't figure out how to roast a naturally occurring bean for another 200 years oh and never mind the fact that it took us yet another century or three to figure out how to transport coffee beans long distances without them spoiling and that's important to keep in mind because the enlightenment began in europe but coffee doesn't grow anywhere near there it only grows in specific climates near the equator known as the bean belt so coffee's journey from ethiopia to europe wasn't fast and it certainly wasn't easy as transportation methods slowly improved though coffee was able to creep its way through the middle east in the 1500s but the beverage was prohibited even criminalized in many of those nations when it first came on the scene who knows perhaps turkey could have been the epicenter of the enlightenment if the government hadn't punished repeat coffee offenders by sewing them into leather bags and tossing them into the ocean watch out starbucks baristas you play a dangerous game by the mid-1600s transportation methods were finally at a point where europe had access to all the caffeine it could possibly handle now a shift in beverage preference may not seem like that big of a deal but it was depressants and stimulants affect our brains in very different ways and when an entire society undergoes a simultaneous change in their brains well that's when you get yourself a cultural shift like there never was before essentially a depressant acts to slow down or depress the activities in your brain doctors typically prescribe depressants to relieve anxiety or help with sleep problems adjectives that pop to mind include relaxed sedated the word motivated does not think of it this way if depressants were a person they'd basically be the dude from the big lebowski well you know that's just like uh your opinion man meanwhile stimulants do the exact opposite of depressants they speed up stimulate activities in the body this means heightened alertness concentration more energy if stimulants were a person they'd be this guy coffee time coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee generally speaking the effects of stimulants mean increased productivity of course tea can contain a fair amount of caffeine as well and tea became readily available in europe around the same time as coffee did so why aren't we talking about tea well it's because tea was very expensive at the time prohibitively expensive as a result only the upper crust of society consumed it but not coffee coffee was a drink of the people and that's a huge reason why coffee caused the enlightenment because it wasn't just about europe getting stimulants it was about getting stimulants into the hands of the right people people like a young isaac newton see before he got the sir ahead of his name newton was just a 20-something who frequented a certain coffee house with his friends okay not that coffeehouse and uh not these friends either isaac newton's buddies at oxford were a tad bit more intellectual newton happened to be studying at oxford when the coffee house craze first came to england now an enlightened mind would never attribute something to fate but it sure seems like newton was the right person in the right place at the right time in 1655 newton and his friends formed the oxford coffee club early participants in the club included sir edmund haley the great astronomer from whom haley's comet is named after han sloan founder of the british museum and of course sir isaac newton who's arguably the inventor of calculus and is inarguably one of the most remarkable scientific minds of all time so this incredible group of people would meet up at the tillyards coffee house to share ideas even dissected a dolphin on a coffee shop table during newton's tenure as president of the organization and over the years the club evolved and grew to become the royal society of london regarded today as the most prolific and most prestigious scientific academy in the world members of the royal society include albert einstein charles darwin stephen hawking benjamin franklin pretty much every major scientific leap made in the past four centuries can be traced back to the royal society and to the coffee house that started it all but there was another reason why oxford students were so drawn to the coffee houses at the beginning pretty much all of the coffee houses were located on the oxford campus because the king was strictly opposed to having the influence of caffeine that's right coffee and caffeine had a tough time gaining acceptance in europe much like in the middle east the coffee houses or invisible colleges as they were often referred to were detested by king charles ii who believed coffee houses helped people share anti-establishment ideas and that might seem like it was a bit over the top but the thing is charles ii couldn't have been more right after all coffee houses allow for the sharing of all sorts of ideas not just math and science often the ideas were political in nature it was the age of reason and the notion of monarchies divinely deriving their power from god didn't exactly stand to well reason the french revolution often considered the culmination of the enlightenment was planned in coffee houses the american revolution was planned in coffee houses coffee even became a symbol of american patriotism following the boston tea party and it's important to remember that the sharing of ideas and the questioning of traditional authority is perhaps the defining characteristic of the age of enlightenment sure there are plenty of scientific discoveries during this time just as there were during the scientific revolution that preceded the enlightenment but the enlightenment wasn't just about science and invention like the scientific revolution the enlightenment is regarded as a distinct stand-alone period in western civilization because it was an intellectual and philosophical movement that changed the way that humans thought about the world enlightenment thinkers like john locke voltaire thomas jefferson believed science and reason could be used to ensure individual rights for the common man improve systems of government the enlightenment occurred because ideas were being shared caffeine helped with the ideas coffee houses absolutely helped with the sharing so as you can see a society's drug of choice has a massive impact for hundreds of years western civilization literally had a depressant flowing through its veins the manifestation of that was the dark ages perhaps the most unproductive period in human history once the west switched over to coffee there was a new focus on reason and free thought democratic ideals swept the western world and globalization had taken productivity to a whole other level so that begs the question what comes next will caffeine continue to dominate our culture for centuries or will the pendulum inevitably swing back to alcohol or is there another drug on the horizon well here's the thing what if i told you there was another drug on the horizon remember how i mentioned earlier that coffee is a hundred billion dollar a year industry so what if i told you that this drug on horizon already is a hundred billion dollar a year industry only right now it's largely underground because it's currently illegal in a lot of the world it's changing though because not only is this drug becoming increasingly legal in countries across the globe with every passing year but also young people have more permissive views of this drug than older generations do just like we saw with coffee right before the enlightenment what if i told you that this drug has seen its usage increase by 60 percent worldwide over the last decade and is by far the most widely abused drug in the world and what if i told you that this drug is neither a stimulant nor a depressant loyal theorists i submit to you that the next massive movement of drug of choice for society at large is cannabis okay before you start calling me matpot down in the comments below hear me out here there are a lot of reasons to believe cannabis which includes marijuana hemp variety of other plants could eventually become the world's next drug of choice and i'm aware that there are a whole lot of cannabis products considered illegal in a whole lot of places currently but remember both caffeine and alcohol have been illegal too caffeine has been banned numerous times over the past few centuries across the middle east europe russia don't forget coffee houses started in europe as invisible colleges people were sewn into leather bags and tossed into the sea because of their coffee related violations and as for alcohol it is still banned outright in dozens of countries and let's not forget that alcohol was made illegal in the united states just a hundred years ago during prohibition there are still dry counties littered across the nation to this very day so the path to becoming widely accepted isn't easy for any new illicit substance but alcohol and caffeine both managed to weather the storm and today they enjoy widespread use and legalization and it sure feels like the wind's blowing in the same direction for cannabis currently too uruguay decriminalized recreational marijuana use in 2016 and canada followed their lead shortly thereafter since then south africa luxembourg and certain u.s states have begun to allow recreational marijuana use too with more nations like new zealand and mexico expected to follow suit and that's just recreational use medical cannabis which is often a nation's first step towards decriminalization of recreational use is exploding across the globe right now so if we're discussing what the world's next drug of choice might be cannabis has to be in the discussion the markets for medical and recreational cannabis products are trending upward legally sold cannabis in the us for example is expected to triple by 2023 so let's just pretend for a moment that i'm right say cannabis does indeed become the drug of choice for western civilization someday soon what would that mean for society would society start to resemble the dark ages because cannabis isn't as easy to classify as alcohol or caffeine cannabis is a broad term that encompasses a whole lot of products derived from a whole lot of different parts of a whole lot of different plants as a result it doesn't fit into one singular classification it can act as a depressant in certain forms it can act as a stimulant in other forms it can also act as an opioid opioids affect the body by attaching proteins to opioid receptors in the brain effectively blocking a person's perception of pain opioids can make you feel relaxed even euphoric if opioids were represented by a person they'd be olaf from frozen hi everyone i'm olaf and i like warm hugs i mean the guy's never not happy he feels no pain and he is definitely chill but could society really go in that direction could we actually become more like olaf hello let's really think about this prior to the enlightenment society was all about alcohol right for centuries and centuries everybody was on a depressant and in the grand scheme of things not a whole lot changed during that time monarchies and the church were essentially permanent fixtures of the era but science and understanding slowly advanced nonetheless we discovered the earth wasn't literally the center of the universe we discovered new continents by the time the mid-1600s rolled around europe was ready for a new way of thinking and experiencing the world and coffee was right on time so what about today is cannabis right on time is marijuana just what the doctor prescribed for all that ails contemporary society allow me to put my matpot hat back on for a moment and submit to you that yeah we could very well be at another societal juncture in human history because collectively the world is quote more stressed worried sad and in pain today than we've ever seen it think about it for the past three centuries society has been obsessed with productivity and technological advancement we've had an industrial revolution and globalization has essentially swept up everyone and believe it or not we've become even more obsessed with caffeine than ever before today tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world but coffee is right on its heels with number two caffeinated energy drinks and caffeinated sodas reside in the top eight drinks as well and where has all that caffeine gotten us despite all the technological advancements in modern day comforts the world is more stressed and sad than it's ever been perhaps a worldwide uptick in cannabis use is the indication that society is finally ready to chill out for a bit and frame the world in yet another new way but hey that's just a theory a food theory and speaking of framing your viewpoint of the world in a new way that is the goal of this channel food theory each episode is getting you to question your assumptions about the food that you consume each and every day like hey did you know that carrots aren't actually that good for your eyesight it's actually all a big part of a propaganda campaign but that's an episode for another day which you should subscribe in order to see so please hit the red button that you see below this video so anyway thank you so much for your subscription it helps prove that this is a channel you're interested in that you're excited for this kind of content i am really enjoying working on this channel i'm learning so much about a whole new category of stuff also if you're a fan of game theory and film theory this channel is actually able to cover a lot of new topics that we've never addressed anywhere because it covers a lot of chemistry and we haven't been able to touch on a lot of chemistry topics over on those other two channels just by the nature of what they cover whereas food it's all chemistry it's really really cool stuff so anyway thank you so much for your subscription to food theory and as always we'll be back next week with more food theory goodness over the teeth over the gums look out stomach here it comes

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 2,443,378

Rating: 4.9084263 out of 5

Keywords: coffee, coffee recipe, starbucks, physics, science, dalgona coffee, coffee for your head, dalgona, dalgona coffee recipe, whipped coffee, cup of coffee, black coffee, coffee shop, enlightenment, starbucks hack, rosanna pansino, how to cake it, food, food science, food myth, food myths, food theorists, food theory, game theory, game theorists, film theory, film theorists, matpat, matpat theory, coffee beans, square mile coffee, recipe, square mile coffee roasters

Id: WcnTU5eO0rQ

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/rinthewolf01]

So, alcohol wired us to weather any hardship during a hard time. Caffeine wired us to be productive during a time when we were ready for a worldwide upgrade. And cannabis would wire us to just relax and vibe together in a time when people have been stressed and divided.

This is sounding like "how to reach enlightenment in 10 easy steps."