April 2018

KITCHEN
CONFESSIONS
Don't Be a
Pod Person
COFFEE PODS ARE BAD FOR YOU, YOUR WALLET AND THE PLANET.
BY LESLIE BILDERBACK
Ihave a coffee problem. I love it. I drink too much of it. And
I most surely have a caffeine addiction. But today I’m not
talking about me (for once). My coffee problem has to do
with you. You, America, and your obsession, addiction and love
affair with the Keurig.
Perhaps you thought that, since it is April, this might be
some sort of jokey column. Sorry. Coffee has been banned
throughout history — in Mecca for stimulating radical
thinking, at the Vatican for being satanic and in Sweden for
interfering with beer profits. But today it is the second-mosttraded
commodity in the world (after oil). Which is why I feel it
is my civic duty to warn you:
Single-serve coffee pods are evil incarnate.
This is not an April Fool’s joke. This is deadly serious. This
is a red alert. Here’s why:
Save the Planet
I will start with the obvious: Those plastic pods are killing
the planet. The company responsible, Keurig Green Mountain
Coffee, produces about 9 billion K-cups (each making only one
cup of coffee) every year. Stacked up, they would circle the earth
more than 10 times. Even if you personally use the 5 percent of
K-cups that are recyclable, there are still 95 percent out there
that aren’t. And you know where they end up, don’t you? In
the fast-growing Great Pacific Garbage Patch with the rest of
the world’s plastic, swirling endlessly in a gyre, slowly breaking
down, but never disintegrating. Actually there are now two
patches in the Pacific, and they are each the size of Texas. Even
the inventor of these pods, John Sylvan, has admitted he feels
bad about that. Plus, because pod waste has a mix of aluminum,
plastic and ground coffee, even if they do make it into the
recycling bin, most municipal recycling plants are not equipped
to process them. Even well-intentioned reuse of the pods is
ridiculously difficult. Why even bother using a canvas grocery
tote if you’re filling it with these planet killers?
Save Yourself
Even if you don’t care a fig about the planet, those K-cups
are making you sick. They are made from #7 composite
plastic, which, although BPA free, have tested positive for
estrogenic activity, which interferes with natural hormonal
cellular function. (I’m not a scientist, but I think that probably
means you’ll grow extra boobs.) Plus, although composite
plastic #7 is a secret proprietary product, we do know that it
contains styrene, which is harmful to your nervous system.
And don’t forget the aluminum top of each pod, which creates
health concerns of its own, including links to a spectrum of
neurological diseases.
Save your Money
Using K-cups is stupidly expensive. The average machine
costs around $100. A typical drip machine is about $40. But
worse than the pots are the pods, which The New York Times has
calculated are costing you $50 per pound of coffee. Even the
best coffee at the hippest coffee bar is not $50 a pound. (There
is that $600-per-pound Sumatran kopi luwak coffee. But that’s
because it’s fermented in wildcat poop. I am not making that
up.) And what do you get for your buck? Most pods are two
parts coffee to one part packaging, which makes it seem like
you’re paying for garbage. Oh, yeah — you are.
Save the Coffee
You only want one cup? Three things:
• What’s wrong with you? Coffee is so delicious! I just sip it
all day long. This is, I’m pretty sure, how I am going to die.
• You can buy single-serve drip makers (see Mr. Coffee)
which use loose ground coffee and cost around $30.
• You can use leftover coffee in a number of delicious ways
(see recipes below) including just chilling it and drinking it
later.
Save Time
“But K-cups are so convenient.”
This is the part where my head explodes and I cry for
humanity. Brewing coffee is not hard. You don’t have to grind
your beans anymore. You don't even have to boil water. Brewing
a pot of coffee is literally the easiest thing there is to cooking.
College kids can do it. Blondes can do it. Trump can do it. You
are saving, at most, eight minutes with your planet-killing,
money-eating pods. Of course, maybe you are using that eight
minutes to save the world in some other way, like recolonizing
honeybees or harassing the NRA. But chances are you will
waste at least eight minutes staring at your phone later today, so
I am not impressed.
Save Your Arguments
Sure, everything is plastic. Toiletries, tools, electronics,
toys — they are all made and packaged with plastic, and we are
drowning in it. But why opt for a product that exacerbates the
problem, when there is a perfectly wonderful, tried-and-true
method already in use? Using a K-cup is a corporate money
grab that you have been sucked into because it’s cool, and that is
–continued on page 46
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