Gastritis is an acute or chronic inflammatory process of the gastric wall: the classic symptoms of the disorder are acidity, burning, stomach cramps, vomiting, and nausea. While the chronic variants require extensive diagnostic investigations and targeted drug therapies, for the milder and more sporadic forms, a little rest combined with a light and adequate diet is sufficient. In fact, gastritis is often caused by bad eating habits such as the abuse of alcohol, spices, certain condiments and foods irritating the gastric mucosa. Abuse of tobacco and some commonly used drugs with gastrolesic properties can also promote the occurrence of gastritis.
In the presence of gastritis, it is very important to avoid all those foods that cause further insult to a gastric mucosa that is already inflamed due to the disorder, and coffee is among them. What determines in coffee this characteristic that can go to disturb the most delicate stomachs is the degree of roasting of the coffee itself. In order to obtain a coffee with a more or less full, sour or bitter flavor, a recent study presented at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society claims, "dark" roasts (obtained at higher temperatures) would seem to be able to affect the production of stomach acids by limiting their action. In the United States alone, in fact, more than 40 million people report not drinking coffee or not drinking as much as they would like because of gastritis. "Some coffee producers," explains Veronika Somoza, author of the study, "treat beans with solvents to reduce irritants. But the effectiveness of this procedure is all to be verified, because it could inhibit even substances that have beneficial effects."
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