Extraordinary Health Magazine Extraordinary Health Vol 30 | Page 37

Located in Coatepec, around 30 minutes outside of Xalapa,
the State Capital of Veracruz, our Finca is owned by a very old,
respected family of coffee farmers. The main lodge has a rich
history, having been used to film the Harrison Ford movie,
Clear and Present Danger over 20 years ago. The entire state
of Veracruz was developed during Spanish occupation, and this
home is built in the traditional Spanish-Colonial style, with stucco
walls and dark wood beams with heavy doors full of ironwork.
Coatepec is known as Mexico’s “Capital of Coffee,” a reputation
earned by the outstanding beauty and quality of the coffee beans
grown in this region. Around the town were coffee shops with
onsite roasters, and the rich aroma left me with a heady feeling
as I walked the streets and Town Square. Surrounding the town
is a thriving university, specializing in the arts, and I could
immediately feel its energy and youth. Modern sculptures dotted
the shops and street corners, somehow perfectly coexisting with
art-deco period painted mosaics, Colonial-period gold-gilded
churches and classical Greek columns. Every bit of this town holds
something to captivate your imagination.
What struck me most, though, was the beauty of the natural
environment. Cloud-covered forests surround the region’s
volcanic mountains while sharp ravines cut by four fast-running
rivers switch back-and-forth across the only roads in and out of
the village. The climate is perfect for growing coffee. The average
temperature remains between 60° F and 85° F all year-round,
and the pure water ensures the coffee trees will be healthy.
ABOUT OUR COFFEE
About the coffee itself; our coffee grows on healthy, dark-
green bushes and small trees that line the flatter areas of the
mountainside. The trees grow a fruit—the coffee cherry—that
takes around nine months to mature. Our coffee cherries are
beautiful when they are ripe—boasting a bright reddish pink
hew. Just like any other cherry, the coffee cherry is a stone fruit,
meaning that it has a pit inside of its soft flesh. We know a lot
about the pits inside of coffee cherries. These are what we call
“beans.” For thousands of years, the skin and flesh of the cherry
have been stripped off, revealing two beans inside of the cherry.
These beans have been slowly roasted to a deep, rich brown-black
state, grinding them and brewing them into that wonderful, black
beverage—coffee.
The beans, prior to roasting, are light green in color, though, and
very rich in beneficial phytochemicals—especially chlorogenic acid.
For years, Garden of Life’s best-selling Raw Organic Fit Weight Loss
protein has been super-powered by Organic Svetol, a clinically studied
extract made from green coffee beans. To make Svetol, the skin and
flesh of the coffee cherry are, again, stripped. Instead of roasting,
the beans are then gently extracted through an organic process
that preserves and concentrates the chlorogenic acid content.
CREATING GREEN COFFEE BEAN EXTRACT
Jeff and the scientists at Van Drunen farms have always been
dedicated to unlocking the benefits of organic, whole foods.
Intrigued by the process of creating green coffee bean extract,
Jeff started to study the whole coffee cherry almost 15 years ago,
focusing on the nutrition content of its
discarded skin and flesh. The potential he
discovered in those cast-off fruits, led to the
development of two exciting new organic ingredients.
Jeff quickly learned that the coffee cherry has among the highest
Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) ratings of any fruit
on the planet (about 625x higher than blueberries). That means
that the coffee cherry is an incredibly potent antioxidant. In
fact, Jeff’s researchers discovered a host of powerful polyphenol
compounds in the skin and flesh including proanthocyanidins,
chlorogenic acid, quinic acid, ferulic acid and caffeic acid.
Jeff told me that he wanted to use this incredible, antioxidant-rich,
whole organic coffee cherry as the source of natural caffeine for
our Sport line. The challenge was in the fast decay of the cherry.
Just like any other cherry, coffee cherries need to be harvested
when ripe, and not before. However, once they are harvested,
the skin and flesh decay quickly. Harvesting on the mountaintop
and then transporting them to Jeff’s farm in Illinois was out of the
question as the crops would be useless by the time they arrived.
A FACILITY NEXT TO THE FINCA
That’s when Jeff decided to create an extraction and drying facility
right next to the Finca. With Jeff’s technology, and the region’s
superior coffee cherries, Jeff committed himself to creating our
Organic Coffeeberry. Jeff told me that this investment created
a win for everyone. “There is a real opportunity to add back
to coffee all of the marvelous, healthy nutrition that had been
discarded as waste material. And there is a sustainability aspect
that really strikes a chord with everything we are doing by
farming organically. On top of that, we are investing back into
the local farming community with jobs, technology and new,
innovative products.”
As I prepared to leave the Finca, I was overwhelmed
with excitement about what we were creating together.
As I wrote above, Jeff committed to making us two innovative,
breakthrough materials from these Organic coffee cherries.
The Organic Coffeeberry caffeine is the first. As for the second
ingredient. . .well, that story will have to wait for a little while.
Vol 30 • Extraordinary Health ™ 35