SOME say your morning cuppa is technically a serving of fruit.
And no, we're not talking about tea, but coffee, the caffeinated drink many deem a necessity to start the day.
So, is your morning coffee made from a fruit?
Verdict:
TRUE
Yes, the beans you grind to make your morning coffee come from a fruit, although the beans themselves are the seeds inside it.
How, you may ask?
The fruit is the coffee cherry, also known as the coffee berry, which is produced by the coffee plant.
The Codex Alimentarius, the international food standards body set up by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), defines the coffee cherry as the "fresh, complete fruit of the coffee tree".
The coffee bean, on the other hand, is described as "the dried seed of the coffee plant".
Each cherry generally holds two of these beans.
Small and round like a grape, the cherries grow in bunches.
Before they mature, they are green. When ripe, they turn deep red, reddish-purple or yellowish-red.
Underneath the cherry's skin lies a fleshy pulp, followed by a tough layer called the parchment and a thin silver skin.
The bean sits at the very centre, wrapped in these layers like the pit of a stone fruit.
"The coffee 'bean' is not a bean at all, but one of two seeds from a fruit, or cherry," noted the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Once picked, the raw beans are extracted to be processed and roasted into coffee, while the rest of the fruit is usually discarded.
So in a way, every cup of coffee starts life inside a fruit.
Sources:
2. https://cehs.unl.edu/news/
