The distilled opinion is "the more you process the less the consumer receives".
For various reasons the most common vehicle for food delivery has been perverted. In response to "manufactured food", fresh food advocates are informing the public about real food and real food costs.
Living on the 100-Mile Diet , Revisiting Carrying Capacity:, Natural Foods, Organic Foods, etc. It appears that greater "inputs" yield less nutrition. Large marketing budgets promote convenience and "filling the belly" instead of feeding the body for growth and health. Increased time spent transporting food means, as well, increased food degradation time. Industry will typically attempt to address product appearance indicators that influence a consumer. Unfortunately nutrition is sacrificed for the sake of colour and appearance.
Before focusing on one product not usually covered in the fresh food debates I would like to add that I believe that the movement advocating quality food is gaining membership.
My interest is the freshness of coffee. Of course people do not live by freshness of coffee alone. That would be silly because it mostly feeds the soul, the well being, the disposition, etc. Coffee has undergone a centralizing process which exchanged convenience for quality. Bigger is not better if the product is lessened. We have not developed Star Trek transporters to move food instantly to the consumer while maintaining the product integrity. If the past is any indicator this futuristic device would further degrade the food. Warehousing roasted coffee decreases the value to the end user.
I advocate that the coffee roaster, grinder, espresso machine, and brewer should be at the same site. Nothing gives more credibility to the freshness of the product as when the consumer can observe the preparation. To this end Jim Townley uses the moniker of "the Theatre of Roasting". It encourages clients to learn about the process while it reinforces the artisanal qualities of freshness and caring preparation. Small batch roasting, in our case 3 kg batches, allows the RoastMaster to roast the requirements of the next few days. Most likely more than one batch of each coffee will be roasted but that is a choice based on sales.
This is a simple food preparation model even though it appears to counter the produced locally mantra of some of the above links. We are not blessed with local coffee plantations but because the coffee bean is a seed which is designed by nature for long term storage it may be consumed at a distance from its origins with a certain proviso. So where is the Freshness Challenge? Roasting transforms the bean and creates havoc with the storage capability of the bean. Roasted Coffee degrades quickly despite touted storage "solutions". Freshly ground stale beans is an advertising distraction which offers no benefit to the consumer. The analogy of the weak chain link is true. Nothing will resurrect stale coffee not even a marketing campaign.
For the best cup of coffee start with a freshly roasted high mountain grown Arabica bean that is ground just before brewing.
