Corby Kummer: Beanless Brewing - A Sustainable Future For Coffee?

Meat, dairy and eggs have been challenged by alternative plant-based products that mimic the taste and texture of animal products. Now, a company called Atomo Molecular Coffee is trying to create the perfect cup of joe without using the coffee bean.

Why would brewing a cup of coffee without the beans be a good idea? Coffee bean production largely contributes to deforestation, food writer Corby Kummer said on Boston Public Radio Thursday.

"It is to prevent the environmental destruction that clear-cutting forests to grow coffee causes," Kummer said. "Farmers all across Central and South America, and even Africa and Vietnam, take these great rainforests and clear-cut everything. They're creating all sort of environmental destruction that lasts for decades. The land dries out, it becomes unproductive, but they're just producing coffee as a cash-crop in the meantime," he said.

Atomo hasn't yet made it completely clear how they're producing coffee bean-less coffee, Kummer said.

"What's unclear is how they are copying coffee's molecular makeup to create this substance that they say baristas can't tell the difference in blind taste tests," he said.