Coffee Production and Ingredients: A Brief Overview

Coffee production begins with harvesting ripe coffee cherries, which contain the seeds commonly called beans. After picking, the cherries are processed to remove the fruit layer, then the beans are dried, milled, and sorted. The green beans are then roasted at high temperatures, developing the flavors and aromas associated with coffee. Finally, roasted beans are ground and brewed with hot water to create the beverage. Each step influences the final cup, from the coffee's origin and processing method to the roast profile and brewing technique.

Coffee ingredients are simple: roasted coffee beans and water. Coffee beans contain hundreds of chemical compounds, including caffeine, acids, sugars, and lipids. The type of bean, roast level, and brewing method determine the flavor. Water quality and temperature matter. Some people add milk, sugar, or flavorings, but the basic ingredients remain coffee and water. Understanding these fundamentals helps anyone appreciate how coffee is made and what goes into each cup.

The freshly-made yogurt sector has been hit by yet another food safety scandal. An undercover reporter from The Beijing News worked inside several Moliyogurt franchise stores in Beijing and found that oat and highland barley toppings more than forty days past their expiration date were still being used as usual, expiration labels were purely for show, and fruit was discarded based entirely on staff members' sense of smell. More worrying still, such violations are not isolated cases, but an unspoken rule tolerated by store managers in order to cut costs and boost their personal income. The brand issued an urgent apology a few hours later, announcing the permanent termination of the stores involved. This is already the second time this year that Moliyogurt has been thrust into the spotlight; previously, the Shanghai Consumer Council questioned the labeling of its product ingredients. This article provides a complete rundown of the undercover details, the brand's response, and the latest status of the stores.

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This afternoon, The Beijing News released a video exposing the well-known freshly-made yogurt brand Moliyogurt for using ingredients more than 40 days past their expiration date to make drinks.

(Video from The Beijing News)

According to reports, a reporter from The Beijing News applied at random and entered four Moliyogurt franchise stores in Beijing between April and mid-May of this year, and during the undercover period found that all four stores had various problems.

At the Moliyogurt Shijingshan Wanda store, when the reporter opened a pack of oat topping as instructed, they found that, based on the information on the packaging, the ingredient was already more than a month past its expiration date, yet the staff turned a blind eye and still added it to customers' drinks. At the Ito Yokado branch, the reporter likewise found multiple packs of highland barley topping more than a month past their expiration date.

In addition, the reporter found that to cope with inspections, staff would change the expiration labels on fresh fruit on schedule, but would not take any action on ingredients that had exceeded their specified shelf life. Some fruits could only be used the same day, but staff did not discard them after closing. Some stores simply did not put expiration labels on at all; as long as staff did not smell anything off, the ingredients continued to be used even if they had expired.

Beyond the above, the stores also had problems such as storing ingredients in ways that did not meet requirements, accelerating their spoilage, and cutting corners by not following the recipe. According to staff, various toppings and fruits are costly, and they "can't afford to throw them away." Whether ingredients have expired and whether to discard them is all decided by the store manager.

Part of the reason store managers use up expired ingredients as much as possible rather than writing them off as expired is that franchise owner-bosses take stock of costs; in order to save costs and increase sales so they can earn more wages, store managers all choose to do this, turning these violations into an unspoken rule of the stores.

(Image screenshotted from Moliyogurt's official website)

Moliyogurt was founded in 2014 and focuses on yogurt drinks made on-site with added fresh fruit. Because of its "exquisite ingredients" and yogurt made with 100% milk, it remains favored by consumers even though its products are priced above 25 yuan. But recently the brand has been accused of food safety problems more than once.

On a certain online complaint platform, there are hundreds of complaints about Moliyogurt, many of them about drink quality, such as "has foreign objects," "uses rotten bananas," and "smells weird," and there is no small number of consumers who felt unwell after drinking.

On March 13 of this year, the Shanghai Consumer Council named Moliyogurt, questioning the ingredients of its mango yogurt smoothie. Test data showed that the fat content in the drink was 3.25 times the protein content and 2.77 times the lactose content, raising doubts about the yogurt content in the drink. In response, Moliyogurt said that claims it "contains no yogurt" were false statements that misled consumers, and that it would pursue legal action.

At present, Moliyogurt issued an urgent apology a few hours after the report was published, responding that it attached great importance to the matter and immediately set up an internal special audit team. Upon verification, the stores mentioned in the report had seriously violated regulations, and rectification was carried out immediately, requiring the stores to close at once and permanently terminating their contracts.

However, China News Service called the above four stores as a consumer. It learned that at present, two stores are temporarily closed, one store has suspended delivery business but consumers can still buy on-site, and when another store was asked whether it was operating normally, the staff member hung up the phone on the spot.

Image source: Internet

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.