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If you’ve ever had sambuca and wondered if you can eat the little coffee beans in one, you’re not alone. So, do you eat the coffee beans in Sambuca?
Find out the answers to this question and many more below.
Everything You Need to Know About Coffee Beans and Sambuca
When you have sambuca, it is usually served as a shot, with seven or three coffee beans around it. But why is that?
The seven coffee beans represent the seven glorious hills of Rome. Three coffee beans represent health, happiness, and prosperity. How nice! The reason that the beans are served as odd numbers is due to the fact that it is bad luck to have an even number of beans with sambuca.
It is common for the sambuca shot to be ignited to toast the coffee beans before being extinguished so it’s drinkable. You don’t want to burn your mouth!
Do You Eat the Coffee Beans in Sambuca? The Answer
In short, coffee beans can be eaten. They can either be chewed before drinking the sambuca to complement the strong notes or afterward as a delicious garnish.
Often, they are covered in light or dark chocolate to add a sweeter taste to the coffee beans.
How Many Coffee Beans Can I Eat?
Although coffee beans are also delicious when eaten, be careful not to eat too many. Coffee beans contain a high concentration of caffeine, so ensure to not go overboard. It’s recommended to not have more than 20 or 30, otherwise, the caffeine could create some adverse effects for you.
However, if you are sensitive to caffeine, or are pregnant, it’s recommended for you to have much less than that number.
But if you are someone who loves living life to the fullest, you are probably wondering what is the maximum amount of coffee beans to have safely before becoming severely ill.
The maximum safe amount for a healthy person is 400mg within a 24-hour period. Taking into account that every arabica coffee bean is around 6mg, this will mean that you can safely eat 66 coffee beans. However, we must stress that this isn’t recommended by the Coffee Bros.
If you have more than this amount, you will likely suffer from headaches, nervousness, irritability, insomnia, muscle tremors, frequent urination, irregularly fast heartbeat, and more.
What are the Benefits of Eating Coffee Beans?
Just because eating a copious amount of beans is bad for you, it doesn’t mean that it’s bad for you in moderation. In fact, in the early days, eating coffee beans was the original way for people to have coffee.
Eating beans provides you with more health benefits than you would get from brewed coffee. This is because you’re leaving behind many of the fibers and other healthy compounds when grinding them. Also, when you brew coffee, it only extracts about 80% of the caffeine content of the bean.
But what other benefits are there of eating coffee beans?
Memory Advantages
It’s annoying when we forget things now and then. However, coffee beans are here to swoop in and save the day.
A recent study by the clever people at the John Hopkins University in Baltimore found that caffeine has a positive effect on improving long-term memory. They conducted a study where participants took 200 mg of caffeine after studying various images and found that those participants could remember those same images when tested the very next day.
Go science!
Exercise Advantages
Although coffee beans have been shown to improve your mental performance, I bet you didn’t know that they can also enhance your physical performance.
They can provide that added performance boost, helping to burn more fat, and giving you many other great advantages too. But how does it do this?
Caffeine often helps you burn more calories and fat through lipolysis. Lipolysis is the reduction of fat that is stored in fat cells. What’s more, coffee beans also raise thermogenesis which is a kind of heat production in the body. When this rises, your body temperature also increases and burns more calories as a result.
When it comes to exercise, coffee beans activate the central nervous system, improving muscle performance, and helping you build muscle.
Adding on to this, caffeine is also great for improving muscles when it comes to endurance. Glycogen, which is the fuel source that is primarily used during endurance exercises, is restored much quicker when caffeine is taken than without it. In fact, a study found that those who had caffeine with carbohydrates had over a 66% increase in glycogen for four hours after a workout than those who solely had carbohydrates after a workout.
Great Antioxidant Source
One of the great benefits of coffee is the antioxidants it provides you. It reduces the risk of cancer, loss of vision, and other potential problems. It does this by fighting off free radicals which try to harm our cells by oxidizing molecules.
Coffee beans have over 11 times the amount of antioxidants as that which is found in green tea.
Not enough of us ingest as many antioxidants as we need. In fact, more than 90% of adults don’t get the daily amount of antioxidants they need to be healthy.
So get munching on those coffee beans!
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So, now you should know the answer to the question: do you eat the coffee beans in sambuca?
Take advantage of this information and enjoy some lovely coffee beans before or after sambuca, or you could even snack on them on without alcohol! With the many health benefits that coffee beans have, this is a great nutritious snack option for when hunger strikes during meals. But remember to eat them in moderation!
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