Coffee is Traditional Chinese Medicine for Wellness! Ethiopian Sidamo is the Best Proof!

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Hahaha! Actually, this is quite a meme!

The origin of this meme comes from a small town called Bensa in the eastern part of Ethiopia's famous Sidamo province. Most coffee in this town is grown in family backyards, so after coffee harvesting, it's sent to the town's processing station for centralized processing, then exported under the town's name. Therefore, coffee beans from this region are also known as Bensa coffee.

For friends from Guangdong province, when they hear the pronunciation of "Bensa," the herbal tea DNA in their body immediately sends a message to their brain: Wow! Bansha (herbal tea) coffee?! This led to the joking saying: "Coffee is traditional Chinese medicine, drinking more is good for health! The fact that Ethiopia has a coffee bean called Bensa is the best proof."

Is Coffee Actually Medicine?

Whether coffee is medicine or not is open to different interpretations, so we won't discuss this in detail here. However, traditional Chinese medicine coffee has certainly captured the hearts of the new generation of health-conscious consumers in recent years!

According to the "2017-2022 China Health and Wellness Industry Market Development Status and Investment Outlook Forecast Report," young people aged 18-35 account for as much as 83.7% of the health-conscious population. Therefore, more and more industries have entered the "health and wellness" track in recent years, and the combination of traditional Chinese medicinal herbs + other products has become a traffic magnet.

The Coffee Industry Joins the Health Trend

The coffee industry is certainly no exception! As coffee itself is also a traffic magnet, "health and wellness" was naturally the first to invite it to join the trend. In 2020, Tongrentang (a famous traditional Chinese medicine brand) opened a coffee shop combining Eastern and Western elements to help more young people pay attention to and understand traditional Chinese medicine. They pioneered traditional Chinese medicine coffee products such as goji berry latte, motherwort rose latte, hawthorn tangerine peel Americano, and longan red bean hand-drip coffee, opening up a path to coffee wellness: "Never slack on wellness, reach the pinnacle of life," "Red dates with coffee, wake up early tomorrow."

The Rise of "Punk Wellness"

The combination of traditional Chinese medicine + coffee instantly became a new consumer trend that young people rushed to follow. People's demand for such products isn't necessarily because the drinks actually have health effects. Precisely because they can't truly provide wellness benefits, the sense of ritual must be maximized. Therefore, they can only settle for the next best thing, adhering to the health principle of "Staying up late is staying up late, but wellness can't be neglected," entering a new realm of "punk wellness."

Therefore, besides traditional Chinese medicinal materials + coffee, more and more coffee shops are now decorated to look like traditional Chinese medicine shops/herbal tea shops, or traditional Chinese medicine shops are directly converted into coffee shops, allowing consumers to visually feel a strong sense of wellness.

Creativity and Responsibility in Coffee Wellness

In these shops, apart from a few specialty coffees that incorporate traditional Chinese medicinal materials, other products still focus on specialty coffee, hoping that while drinking a normally extracted cup of coffee, people can reduce the psychological burden of "internal heat" (a concept in traditional Chinese medicine).

Such creativity is actually quite good. After all, the development of the coffee industry requires these impactful combinations to stimulate public interest in coffee. However! Not all traditional Chinese medicines can be mixed with coffee!

More and more people are now imitating the practice of "medicine in coffee," successively adding some traditional Chinese patent medicines and pharmaceuticals that should avoid cold and raw foods, such as the "Huoxiang Zhengqi Iced Americano" that recently trended on social media... All medicines have some toxicity; once used improperly, not every friend can bear the side effects. Traditional Chinese medicine in coffee must use materials that are both medicine and food!

These seemingly simple mixing combinations are a real test of the creator's understanding of both traditional Chinese medicinal materials and coffee bean characteristics. On one hand, they need to understand the medicinal herbs themselves; on the other hand, they need to consider whether the taste of these herbs is too strong and might overpower the original flavor of the coffee; and on yet another hand, they need to consider whether the taste after combining medicinal herbs with coffee is acceptable to the general public.

Many merchants, when launching products, choose drinks that look impactful or are trending online, but don't consider whether such combinations are appropriate and suitable.

Although "medicinal coffee" is very popular, each consumer's sensitivity to each medicinal herb is different. Therefore, without a deep understanding of the "medicine" added to coffee, it's still recommended that everyone not blindly try it. Being responsible for yourself is also being responsible for others.

Image source: Internet | Xiaohongshu

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