Food Theory: Wait... Coffee is a SOUP?!

all right so uh that covers game theory for the next couple weeks unless uh anything last minute pops up moving on uh food Theory let's see We've Got Crystal Pepsi in the works we've got radioactive bananas what do we have going on for next week it's open week any pitches people on Tick Tock are making mashed potatoes out of Pringles they are oh that sounds miserable I like that I want to cover that but let's not do it next week just because that's a kitchen shoot we've done a lot of kitchen stuff lately anything else anyone oh uh Dan haven't you and your wife been arguing about something so we've been having an argument about whether or not coffee is super not she says it is soup I say you don't drink soup okay first off you do drink soup like you can Ladle soup it's just broth right soup you drink coffee Campbell's made a whole thing about like drinking soup what type of soup are you saying it's a bean soup no no no the beans aren't in the soup it's not Beanstalk it's not like chicken it's not like beef okay I think we got our episode Amy's chugging her Bean broth right now don't say that foreign [Music] ternet welcome to food Theory the show that gets asked all the time how we come up with episode topics and well you just saw it that meeting at the top of the episode was exactly what gave rise to the video that you're watching right now our head editor Dan was having a nerdy debate with his wife and so we decided to stick our noses into his business and settle it once and for all because that's what you do when you make online content you monetize your personal life you see back when this Channel first launched we covered what makes a sandwich a sandwich that simple question sent us on a wild goose chase through court rulings International tax law and legal loopholes to ultimately find that the definition of a sandwich in some areas includes burritos Pizza even chicken wings yup you heard that right chicken wings which could never be considered a sandwich by any reasonable person ever yet there was defined as a sandwich by certain Colorado tax laws but you see those are the absurdly high stakes that we're dealing with in episodes like this for as dumb and random as questions like is coffee extra bean soup might seem decisions around these definitions actually impact your pocketbook as well as the bottom lines for both restaurants and the government as an example of how the legal definition of coffee can lead to high-stakes legal battles in 2014 a pair of people sued Target because they had been charged sales tax for their to-go order of coffee why would they have a problem with that well California has a sales tax exemption for certain products which include quote coffee and coffee substitutes tea and cocoa and cocoa products and yet here was Target charging them the sales tax seems like Target was clearly in the wrong here right well then you get to the tricky part under California tax law you're charged different tax rates depending on whether you're getting hot or cold food if you're just getting cold food say a sandwich to go you pay a lower tax rate if you're getting something hot like say a hot bowl of soup then you pay a higher tax rate but if that wasn't weird enough it gets even stranger if you're getting multiple food items suddenly that becomes a meal and if there's any hot food product in there whatsoever then the entire thing is taxed as a hot meal so what does any of this have to do with coffee well that California tax code lists coffee as an example of a hot food product by its inclusion in a meal it transforms the entire thing into a hot meal and gets it taxed higher cold sandwich tax exempt hot coffee tax exempt cold sandwich plus hot coffee suddenly you've gotten yourself a hot meal and both parts are getting taxed at the higher rates like when you multiply two negative numbers to get a positive eat two tax-exempt food items together and you get to spend more on taxes in the end Target won the case as the court said in its opinion on the verdict the exemptions that may or may not apply to different food products are quote exceedingly closely regulated complex and highly Technical and as matpat said in his opinion on the verdict is dumb but can case law help us settle our head editor Dan's domestic debate well looking deeper into the legalese around the classification of soups and coffees what immediately becomes clear is that tax law seems much more concerned with how the coffee is served and how you order it rather than what's actually in it for example many states have sales tax regulations that say if you go to Starbucks and pay pick up one of those pre-made Frappuccinos that come in a glass bottle you don't have to pay sales tax whereas if you went to the Barista and asked them to make you a Frappuccino made with the exact same ingredients and had it served in a plastic cup then you would be paying sales tax and then you have Pennsylvania where brewed coffee that comes out of a vending machine normally gets taxed but it's not taxed if it comes out of the vending machine in a cold bottle so it seems today we need to be focused more on the culinary definitions of these food preparations rather than the legal ones so from a culinary perspective is coffee bean soup is it vegetable juice is it Bean broth is it something else entirely well if you look all of these classifications are made up of a first word that describes the food type and a second word that describes the liquid form so to get our answer let's tackle one of these at a time right out of the gate though it's time to tell our head editor Dan the words that he's always wanted to hear hey Dan Dan can you uh come into the booth uh yeah what's up you got um good news for me Dan you're right your wife is wrong coffee is definitely not bean soup that's what I'm talking about Booyah but it's not for the reason you think not because of The Soup part but because of the Bean Part see coffee beans aren't actually beans just like peanuts aren't actually nuts and koala bears aren't actually Bears okay A bit of a technicality but I'll take the win you see the word Bean actually has a very specific definition within the flowering plant family of fabasi otherwise known as the legume Pea or Bean family there are several genuses whose seeds are classified as beans if you're not part of that specific group then you are not technically a bean and coffee is not part of the club so for your wife to say it's a bean soup she is technically wrong it may still wind up being a soup we're gonna get to that in a minute here but it's definitely not a bean soup though might I suggest not making a big deal of that tonight at dinner dunking on your wife for being wrong is rarely a good decision I appreciate the advice I'm just not gonna listen to it alright now back to the editor dungeon please this narrative conceits getting a bit tiring to keep up there's plenty of restocked coffee down there for you to inject as you see fit I prefer the IV bags okay so if coffee is a plant but it's not beans then is it a vegetable well also no well an actual Bean would be a legume and therefore a vegetable what we call the Coffee Bean is actually a seed taken from the fruit of a cafe a plant the fruits of these plants which are known as cherries or berries contain one or two seeds seeds that we then call coffee beans and just to make matters even more confusing those coffee cherries not actually a cherry for similar taxonomical reasons let's just leave it at coffee beans aren't beans they're the seeds of the cafe of fruit so that's the first half of what coffee actually is but what about the second half of our classification if coffee is a liquid made from fruit seeds does that then make it a fruit juice I mean that's what pomegranate juice is after all pop those seeds like Nature's Own bubble wrap and drink the results well no and it all comes down to the word juice juice is technically the drink that's made from the natural liquids contained within a fruit or a vegetable a liquid that is then extracted by squeezing or pressing squeeze an orange and drink what comes out same thing with pomegranate juice drink the liquid that's coming out of the seeds if a product is labeled and sold as juice it is legally required for the liquid portion to come from a fruit this also means that fruit flavored drinks that you make by mixing a powder with water like Kool-Aid Tang or Crystal Light are not juices and you'll notice that they don't advertise themselves that way they're not allowed to if you read the packaging for products like this you'll tend to see stuff like you see on the Crystal Light label here a sweet alternative to juice so cross fruit juice off the list that said if you do want to try actual coffee juice the thing you can actually make in fact that's exactly what a company called Kona red did rather than throwing the outer part of the cafe of fruit away after removing the seeds they took the fruit and squeezed the juice out of them to create a bottled drink that you can no longer buy because they've gone out of business apparently there's a good reason that part of the plant doesn't make it into the cup of joe that you're sipping every morning so if it's not a fruit juice then what does it make it then a fruit broth soup puree gruel porridge gravy well gravy is an easy one to cross off the list for as delicious as a slow pouring thick viscous coffee gravy might sound AKA not at all Delicious gravies By definition are thickened by adding flour or cornstarch definitely not a fit porridge and gruel can also be safely crossed off the list for similar reasons those are foods that are made from starchy cereal grains don't believe everything you see on Tic Tac friends I'm trying the coconut water Berry breakfast cereal oh it's good sorry lizzo that is not cereal that is a bowl of fruit also why did you put random ice cubes in I just I just can't anyway cereals are specifically grasses that are cultivated for their edible grain components like wheat rice and barley again not relevant to Coffee puree is actually promising a puree by definition is made by taking a fruit or vegetable and pressing blending sieving or grinding it sounds like the same set of words you'd use to describe making coffee however what knocks puree out of contention is that the point of grinding pressing blending and sieving is that the food can eventually be consumed you eat a squash puree not just the liquid that was run through it but no matter how much you grind those coffee beans you are not going to be eating those grounds the reason that we grind them up is to maximize the surface area so that the flavor can Leach out into the hot water that's poured through it if you mixed the coffee grounds into your final beverage and sure that could be considered a puree but if you drink your coffee like a normal rational person then nope not gonna cut it which brings us down to broth or soup let's tackle broth first this one's seems like it might apply a broth or bouillon is made by simmering water together with a mixture of other ingredients and while yes most coffee is made using boiling water some preparations involve simmering for instance if you use a percolator the water technically should never reach a boil but even if we were just simmering our coffee beans we'd have to contend with the fact that broths tend to describe the products of a simmering meat fish or vegetable which are coffee bean as we've established is none of and with that we're here the final option is coffee a soup the answer is yes no yes sorry Dan but soup is commonly made by boiling the ingredients to extract their flavor and boiled water is the most common way to make coffee but that's not all one of the classic methods of flavoring soup involves adding ingredients to the boiled water that aren't part of the finished product that you eat it's common for Soups to be made with ingredients that are added for flavor and then removed before serving ingredients like bones or spices like bay leaves and rosemary exactly what we do with the coffee grounds but is there such a thing as a fruit seed soup absolutely fruit soup's definitely a thing seed soups also a thing squash and Nigella seed soup sunflower seed soup cotton seed soup the list goes on and on but not only are fruit soups and Seed soups both the thing fruits seed soups also very popular search for melon seed soup recipes on Google and you'll get millions of results stuff like egusi soup a traditional West African dish or even more popular pumpkin seed soup a sweet and creamy dish the only thing that keeps this from being a perfect label is the fact that soup is classically used to describe a food not a beverage but hey with the amount of sugar and syrup that some of us add to our coffees we've already got enough calories to call it a meal yeah that Starbucks frappuccino has more calories than the blueberry muffin you're eating with it so there you have it Friends Coffee is a fruit seed soup not vegetable juice or Bean broth or a legume mash it is basically the equivalent of tomato soup bring that one up the next time you're delivering someone's Starbucks order No One's Gonna know what you're talking about but you can rest confident in the knowledge that you are technically correct which we all know is the best kind of correct but hey that's just a theory a food Theory Bottoms Up and hey if you're the kind of person who spends way too much time thinking about how to classify and sort food into different categories and I know you are since you made it all the way to the end of the video then click over to see this classic food Theory where we talk about what does and does not meet the legal definition of a sandwich or if you're in the mood for some more coffee themed theories check out this episode where we talk about how coffee might just be responsible for history's most important scientific discoveries including the phone that you have in your hand right now I know you're watching on a mobile device

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 3,143,044

Keywords: coffee, soup, bean soup, coffee soup, is coffee soup, coffee is soup, coffee broth, is coffee broth, coffee is broth, bean juice, good coffee, good coffee meme, soup recipe, bean soup recipe, black coffee, lemon and coffee, i pour my coffee, coffee house, best coffee, coffee machine, coffee taste test, coffee order, what is coffee, is it soup, will it, will it soup, food theory, food theorists, matpat, game theory, film theory, food theory coffee, food theory sandwich

Id: fRpJnS4yc7k

Length: 12min 17sec (737 seconds)

Published: Sat May 14 2022