Collagen coffee for plump skin and healthy joints; mushroom coffee to improve concentration and creativity; coffee that burns fat for instant slimming; coffee with butter to reduce appetite…
As a lady approaching forty, I am bombarded with advertisements that promise eternal youth, sharpness and firmness. The algorithms try to create needs for me by relying on the injunctions that our society likes to impose on women, nothing surprising there. What surprises me is that many of these ads are about coffee.
However, I am not a big fan. I only drink one in the morning, more out of habit than out of appreciation of the taste… I actually started the ritual quite late. At university, many students would arrive to class with an alarming amount of coffee in hand. If it helped them survive the sleepless nights caused by work or more likely partying, then I was obviously going to follow the group. No crazier than any other.
I started drinking coffee to be more productive. Should I be surprised that today people are trying to sell it to me to “optimize” my body, my mind and my health?
“The history of coffee is largely the history of productivity in the American industrial world,” believes Jean-Pierre Lemasson. The sociologist of food tells me that managers offered coffee to their employees as early as the 1850s based on a very simple hypothesis: “Man had to produce more, therefore he needed more energy, like a machine. »
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Jean-Pierre Lemasson, sociologist of food
That was good, coffee was a source of energy appreciated by the workforce! He created what the retired UQAM professor calls “happy productivity.” Firstly because the workers felt really energized, then because the coffee came with a break… Also established to increase their productivity by strengthening their sociability and allowing them to regain their strength.
In short, we’ve been seeing coffee for a long time as an elixir that helps us achieve more. However, what surprises Jean-Pierre Lemasson (who is obviously not confronted with the same algorithms as me) is that we suddenly associate it with health.
The food heritage expert remembers a time when several studies attempted to determine whether or not coffee was harmful to our health, particularly on the cardiovascular level. (A legend has it that Balzac died because he drank 50 coffees a day to manage to write everything he had to write. Did he at least put butter in it to control his weight at the same time, the lazy guy?) If everything seems to indicate that the beverage is ultimately not a threat to our survival when we consume it moderately, “we move on to another logic by making it a vector for promoting health because we add additives, such as collagen, whose virtue is far from proven,” believes Jean-Pierre Lemasson.
“We are in a fantasy. »
I’m not a sociologist and I only base this on what keeps me up at night, but I have the impression that this fantasy encapsulates several strong trends of our time.
Performance, obviously. The one that we sometimes value to the point of breaking. The quest for spirituality, too. Some sites promoting adaptogenic coffees (in which medicinal herbs and mushrooms are added) specify that these are ancestral drinks once popular with shamans… Optimization of health undoubtedly has something to do with it, too. It is increasingly present on social media, advocated by a number of doctors who have become public figures who invite us to develop our full potential (including the Americans Andrew Huberman and Petter Attia). Without forgetting the miracle diet that certain products can solve our ailments.
I’m not saying that any of this is necessarily wrong or negative. I just think we are bombarded with the same message: we can do better.
The context is perfect for me to end up drinking three coffees a day while crossing my fingers that I will solve three different problems.
Jean-Pierre Lemasson thinks out loud: coffee is one of the most consumed drinks in the world. Let’s imagine how immense the development potential is for a company that promises us that by adding something to it, it will make us productive on a whole new level… “Except that it’s marketing mythology,” insists he.
Mythology, perhaps. But marketing has always been able to identify our flaws, our dreams and our needs. And here, I have the impression that he is hitting the nail on the head.