Follow-up on my decaf story - L'or Espresso Decaf

Expectations

In addition to my previous blog about starting to drink decaf over regular coffee, which you can read here, I received a few comments that made me look into decaf rather sooner than later.

Let's be clear when I say that I have questions whenever a light product is presented or when something is presented as the healthier option and pushed as a narrative. After many years of hardships and discovering how some things really work over how we're conditioned to just follow blindly what we're told, I surely can't just assume they're telling the truth with anything. I therefore question most things by default, although I won't always take action to research things immediately because I also learned that there are too many things that I will not be able to change, therefore accepting it is the best thing for a good state of mind.

When it comes to coffee, and in this case decaf, I also had expectations that this would not automatically make it the better option out there. Although I didn't instantly dig into it, I put it on my list for when things have calmed down and I would find time to get to that topic.

My reason for decaf

I think I mentioned it in the other post but my reason for drinking decaf was health, dealing with the side effects of painkillers (read: the withdrawal of trying to quit them) I felt discomfort and wanted to rule out any thing in my diet that could make things worse. These heart palpitations I had for many days made me feel so scared that I was afraid to drink coffee because it felt that this could make it even worse. Instead, I started cycling indoors every hour for just a short period to get through the intervals of the heart palpitations easily.

As the palpitations faded while I switched from fully quitting the heavy medication to taking half dose of the less heavy (and safer according to the doctor) variant to ease the symptoms, I already didn't take any caffeine for 5 days and noticed that my cravings for coffee were gone.

I didn't have any headaches either which was lovely, so it made me decide to continue this path and take a decaf cup whenever I'd feel like having a coffee.

One cup a day

Until this very day it means that I only drink 1 cup a day and don't crave coffee throughout the rest of the day or even evening like I used to and I have to say that I like this a lot. While I published the previous post, I fully expected at least one comment about decaf as I already had some expectations that it would not automatically mean decaf is better for you.

The Swiss water method

There were a few more than one and the one from @kunschj was first to point out what to look out for when getting decaf. This was very helpful because it meant that I could start with a quick search to find a bit of answers instead of doing a deep dive and hoping for the best. Here's his comment:

This was super helpful because I went to check on the L'or website for this method but could not find it. I found a lot of talk about sustainability and some labels but not that. I know for a fact that many brands use other names or expensive words to masque their true story.

Let's find out which method my favourite brand uses

I sent out an email to L'or to ask directly if they use the Swiss water method and this is the email I received back:

Now there are a few things I'd like to say about this email, first, I asked directly if they used the Swiss water method and instead of a 'no, we use x or y...' I got a whole lot of talk before throwing the expensive words 'supercritical CO2 and dichloromethane - DCM' in the next sentences.

Although I had no clue what the heck that meant, I already felt this mail was written in a way that I expected one of these terms to turn out to be exactly what I didn't hope. On top of that, the CO2 part would someone who doesn't know this (like myself) believe that's water so it's the Swiss water method, lol.

Maybe that's a dumb thought but I felt as if this was implied without saying it directly. The part mentioning that things are safe and stuff like that is something every company would probably mention and I believe they have some quality standards they indeed have to live up to but we all know this often doesn't make it healthy by default.

So what now?

I just bought another pack of the cups so I will not throw these out but at least finish this pack, especially considering that I drink only one cup a day. I'm curious if one cup a day or even two of them would cause any issues over drinking 4 maybe 5 regular cups with caffeine (including the sugar and milk) or that it's to be neglected.

At this moment, I don't know enough about this method and therefore I will have to read more about it and mostly, first find another alternative to drink because I'm not willing to drink bland decaf, I didn't enjoy that with caffeine and surely will not do so without it. One thing I know for sure is that I will check any other brand further before buying it. Until then, Lor it is!

Conclusion

As per my expectations, decaf is not all roses and sunshine and I think @honeydue was right in not trusting decaf. On the other hand, we consume too many things not healthy for us so most likely drinking one of these will not result in any side effects but it's definitely good to be aware and know what you're drinking (and in other cases eating) so I'm thankful for the guidance of @kunschj and later @thebighigg as well..

If you have any more to add or thoughts about the email I received back, please share them in a comment below, I'd like to read it!

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All pictures above are my own..