Thursday, May 09, 2013

Turkish coffee or what nationality does coffee have?

Turkish coffee or what nationality does coffee have? Or should it have one? But has carried a Turkish passport for long enough to claim a sort of belonging.

Coffee is not Turkish per se; indeed the best coffee beans come from different parts of the world, and we do not grow coffee in Turkey at all! 

How we make and savor the coffee makes it Turkish, and  thus it is with the brain. It is like the way we use our brains, that is set by the culture and environment we live in. 
On the other hand, tea is a “republican” drink, while coffee is more “imperial”. Our cuisine has been succesful in , importing and incorporating non-self (“foreign, other”) tastes and dishes utilizing the exact same tongue and nose (fortaste and flavor) we used for ‘our’ very own tastes and dishes. We exploit the same neural mechanisms when we import a behavior or a lifestyle using the same brain structure inn order to generate a new “frame of mind”.

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