Tag: Coffee News

Is your love of coffee genetic?

Posted on by Sara Walker
Scientists believe they may have discovered the 'caffeine gene'
Scientists believe they may have discovered the ‘caffeine gene’

Can’t get going in the morning without your cup of coffee? New research could indicate that your genes could be the reason. Scientists at Edinburgh university have discovered a gene that seems to influence the amount of coffee people drink, and could affect how we process coffee in the body.

Coffee and new gene linked

Research carried out on Italian villagers has revealed that people carrying a specific variant of the PDSS2 gene drink less coffee than those without the gene. Geneticist and lead researcher Nicola Pirastu explained that carriers of the gene seem to metabolise coffee more slowly, so they get a longer-lasting caffeine hit from each cup and need to drink less. The results were checked by completing a survey of 1,731 people in the Netherlands, who exhibited the same link to a slightly less extent. Nicola Pirastu added that further research needs to be done to confirm the findings, which was published in the journal Scientific Reports earlier this year.

Researchers asked over 1,000 people living in villages around Puglia in southern Italy and Friuli Venezia in the north east to complete a survey about their coffee drinking habits, and also analysed their genetic material.

How the research could help

Scientists find caffeine a rewarding area for study, as it’s known to protect against some types of cancers, Parkinson’s disease and some cardiovascular diseases. Research on the new gene could help us understand the health benefits of the stimulant. Some of the genes that help us to breakdown caffeine also affect our ability to metabolise certain medicines, so the research could also help doctors to create a personalised treatment plan for patients in the future.

For all your wholesale coffee needs, including coffee beans, accessories, supplies and everything else for your coffee business, take a look at our main website at www.wholesalecoffeecompany.co.uk.

What next? Coffee Scented Newspapers

Posted on by Sara Walker


wake up and smell the coffeeImagine flicking through a recipe book and smelling the food through the pages, reading a book infused with scents, or picking up your junk mail to throw it in the bin, only to discover that you can actually smell the product its advertising.

Creative Directors at the advertising agency, DC Thomson & Co may not have branched out into the realm of scented food ads, but they have created a newspaper advert for the Scottish based IT company, BusinessPort, that smells of real coffee beans. Ingenious – now you can literally wake up, read the paper and smell the coffee.

You’d think the advert would be more appropriate for a company selling coffee machines or other coffee based products, but BusinessPort wanted to be innovative and attract more attention. They certainly accomplished that. An advert for an IT company smelling of coffee beans, isn’t exactly what you’d expect is it?

The advert first appeared in the Scottish newspaper, the Press and Journal and is said to be the first of its kind for the paper. As a result, BusinessPort hope to get people talking about it and buying their products. Other adverts on the radio and social media platforms have also helped to promote the idea.

So how does it work? When I first heard about this, perfume ads sprung to mind – the kind where you peel back the bit of foil and rub the scent over your neck and wrists only to discover that you’re not a huge fan of it.

However, BusinessPort’s coffee infused ad has been made differently. The coffee bean scent was actually injected directly into the ink to create the effect.

So, what next for the future of advertising? Will we start to see and smell more scented messages? Will the idea take off or is it just a bit intrusive? I’m sure we’ll find out in due course.

The Coffee Pot Shoe

Posted on by Sara Walker

Do you remember the nursery rhyme, ‘There was an old woman who lived in a shoe?’

It might be a far-fetched connection, but that’s exactly what sprung to mind after the discovery of the footwear designer, Kobi Levi. Some of his designs almost look as if tiny people could inhabit the shoes or use them as functional everyday objects. For example, the shoes that resemble miniature red shopping baskets or the high heels sculpted to look like ladders.

Other designs include shoes that look like ducks with the heels sculpted to look like yellow beaks, rocking chair shoes and even pink chewing gum shoes – we’re not so sure about wearing these ones though.

Our favourites out of the Kobi Levi collection are the coffee pot shoes that really do look like coffee pots filled with deliciously brewed coffee beans with the heels of the shoes resembling hot black coffee being poured. So, if you like the idea of wearing coffee pots on your feet, you’ve got two designs to choose from – the sophisticated black coffee pot or the classic white coffee pot resembling fine china.

As a wholesale coffee company we’d love to see a whole collection of shoes dedicated to coffee beans with the shoes perhaps boxed in shoe boxes made to look like miniature coffee machines…the possibilities are endless. The way things are going with companies such as Singtex, designing sportswear out of coffee beans, perhaps we’ll start to see some more functional shoes actually made with coffee beans.

About Kobi Levi

Kobi Levi’s footwear design career began in childhood when he would craft shoes out of cardboard. After completing his degree, Levi went onto become a freelance shoe designer of weird and wonderful shoes. He gained worldwide recognition for his interesting creations through his blog ‘Blog Kobi’ which attracted the attention of Lady Gaga who used one of Kobi’s shoes in her music video ‘Born this Way’.

Coffee Bean Creativity

Posted on by Sara Walker

Things To Do With Coffee Beans

You probably love drinking them, maybe even roasting them but have you ever made art with them?

From detailed paintings of landscapes in different shades of brown to stencilled coffee cup lattes, coffee beans are a versatile medium.

This year, two artists stood out – Hong Yi for her interesting coffee cup ring paintings and Arkadi Kim for breaking the world record for the longest coffee bean mosaic.

Japanese based artist, Hong Yi created a painting of the singer Jay Chou using the bottom of her coffee cup. It seems that Yi embraced the coffee ring stain that most of us hate. Her technique involved dipping the bottom of her cup in coffee and then creating hundreds of rings on her canvas to create intricate works of art.

Also this year, Russian artist Arkadi Kim, broke the world record for the largest coffee bean mosaic which was created and displayed in Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure in Moscow for one month over the summer.

The mural, which was appropriately titled ‘Awakening’ took approximately one million coffee beans to make and measured almost 30 square metres. The different colours were created by roasting the coffee beans for different amounts of time – now that’s an example of painstaking dedication!

Impressively, the large scale coffee bean masterpiece took Kim and his team of five assistants only two weeks to complete and involved gluing different shades of coffee beans, one at a time onto a large board.

The finished result was a girl’s face with a cup of coffee and lots of swirly lines resembling the wonderful aroma of coffee – although, we think the girl could have looked a bit more cheerful.

To complete the exhibition, a temporary coffee shop equipped with good quality coffee machines and some comfy seats was set up in the park so visitors could get the full coffee bean experience.