I've started seeing these Starbucks Refreshers cans. Turns out, they are diet supplements thinly disguised (get it, thinly?) as energy drinks, the coffee biz always has played fast-and-loose with the truth to make a buck.
Roasting the green coffee "beans" destroys chemicals, including chlorogenic acid, which is now being claimed to aid in dramatic weight loss. I'm homeless, so I can be excused if I don't know a Dr. Oz from a Wizard of Oz, but this Dr. Oz has been touting the "no exercise" weight-loss benefits of green coffee bean extract since 2012.
So Starbucks comes out with a green coffee bean extract beverage. Of course they would. They can't call it a weight loss drink, so they throw in some fruit juice, vitamins, and ginseng, and call it an energy drink. And actually, it tastes pretty good.
Three "fibs" about coffee:
- Coffee "beans" are really fruit pits. One roaster, a decade ago, explained to me a common, low-tech, method of getting the pits out of the fruit: strew the coffee cherries on a large expanse of concrete, and let the hot sun do the work.
- Arabica beans, promoted by both Starbucks and the Columbian coffee growers (Juan Valdez) as worth paying $5-a-cup for, have less caffeine than the much cheaper Robusta beans which made up a cup of Folgers in your parents' day.
- dark-roast tastes strong, but roasting the beans burns off caffeine; the light-roast will perk you up a bit more.
An irony about the green bean fad is that Starbucks, can't lose, but the faddies might be in for a surprise. Refreshers probably allows Starbucks to squeeze more value out of its supply chain. In fact, the fad could flop, and Refreshers could still succeed, Starbucks' brand is so strong. The faddies all over this weight loss thing, may wake up to news stories linking chlorogenic acid to hypertension and allergies, and even cardiovascular disease. BTW, they are considered a ready-to-drink beverage, here in Vancouver, B.C., so the cans have a five-cent deposit.