Coffee: see how to choose and avoid fraud – 09/30/2023 – Food

Your cup of coffee may contain much lower quality than desired, you know? Recently, MAPA (Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock) ordered the recall of batches of roasted and ground coffee due to fraud and impurities above the limit and at least six brands were notified.

A period of 30 days was established for them to collect, store in a single location and stop selling the lots. No company challenged the determination, according to UOL.

But how are impurities above the limit and fraud in coffee batches identified?

“It must be borne in mind that fraud and impurities are determined through microscopy analysis carried out in the laboratory by qualified technicians. In the cafe, there should only be coffee. But, as it is an agricultural product, the legislation determines a tolerance limit and no risk to health”, explains Mônica Pinto, nutritionist and marketing manager at the Brazilian Coffee Industry Association (Abic).

According to the professional, this limit is up to 1%, including impurities (peels and sticks) and foreign matter, which are sediments foreign to the product, such as sand, stones, clods and other dirt, originating from farming and the warehouse.

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If this limit is exceeded, the product is disqualified as a product for consumption, and its commercialization is no longer permitted. “Any foreign element, such as grains or seeds of other types, dyes, sugar, caramel and soluble or infused coffee grounds, is indicative of fraud, which is not permitted and there is no tolerance”, he adds.

After all, does “fake” coffee exist? The straight answer is no. Mônica says that fraudulent coffees are those that contain strange, adulterated elements, that is, it is not just coffee that is in the package.

“Fraud is not allowed and there is no tolerance, unlike impurities and foreign matter, coming from the coffee plant itself, and without risk to health, in this case there is a limit of up to 1%”, he says.

That said, there is no such thing as “fake coffee”, but rather adulterated coffee that can cause health risks, in addition to promoting unfair competition in serious industries that work considering good practices and comply with legislation.

To carry out this analysis, an accredited company goes to points of sale (supermarket, gas station convenience store, neighborhood grocery store, any establishment that sells roasted and/or ground coffee in Brazil) and purchases the coffee, in the same way as the consumer would buy, that is, the final product.

These coffees are taken to certified analysis laboratories, where they are uncharacterized, that is, the person analyzing does not know the brand or product they are analyzing.

As Mônica explains, in the case of impurities and fraud, the analysis is microscopic. When the coffee arrives at the laboratory, it will be homogenized, to ensure that the sample is representative, and two grams will be weighed.

Afterwards, the coffee will be degreased, because the coffee oils make it difficult to view under a microscope. After degreasing, the coffee is filtered, dried in an oven and sieved, only then will it be ready for analysis under a microscope.

From there, the technician collects all impurities found in the sample and weighs it to check whether it is within the established limit of, at most, 1%, or whether the sample contains any fraud, such as , the presence of corn, rye, sugar, açaí, barley or soy.

Since launching the Purity Seal in 1989, Abic has monitored coffee sold in Brazil, collecting products from members and non-members, and has already carried out 170,000 analyses. They all feed into an entity database.

If the process for storage and thorough analysis carried out by industry experts guarantees the arrival of a certified commercial product, how should the common consumer be aware or know how to choose the best coffee on a trip to the market?

Many of the industrialized coffees, in traditional, superior and gourmet categories, follow an Abic standard (purity seal) that stipulates limits on defects per category and prevents the presence of impurities.

“The common consumer often doesn’t notice. The drink is strong in bitterness and often has flavors of smoke, ash, rubber, earth, coal”, explains gastrologist Keiko Sato, founding partner of Punga Cafés Especiais, a coffee service roasting and baptism school run by women.

The expert states that eating unripe fruits will always bring a feeling of dryness in the mouth, lack of sweetness and flavor. The opposite is not good either: a fruit that is past its ideal ripening point can feel old and rotten. Drying until excessively dehydrated can bring a flavor of smoke, ash, and rubber.

“For the drink to be good, it needs to have selected fruits, harvested at the peak of ripeness. This way, it will have pleasant sweetness, body and acidity. This certainly also impacts the final price”, he states.

As coffee does not ripen after being harvested, she explains that the producer must hope to have the highest percentage of ripe fruits possible to start harvesting. Everything harvested, regardless of whether it was ripe or not, whether it was coffee swept from the ground, will be sold.

After this, each harvested seed will be grouped by maturity and scored after roasting, being sold according to its quality.

Seeds that have serious defects (green or burnt black seeds) will score low, which categorizes them as traditional or superior.

The gourmet category does not contain this type of defect, but these are fruits that, due to some interference in the cycle, did not have high sugar levels and do not present complexity.

Specialty coffee, or special coffee, has high levels of sweetness and compounds that will bring complexity of flavors, acidity, body and low bitterness to the cup.