Coffee's calmer cousin, made from what we throw away

Every date has a stone, and the stone — roughly a tenth of the fruit's weight — almost always ends up in the bin. Roast those stones and grind them, though, and they brew into something that behaves a lot like coffee: dark, nutty, faintly sweet, without the bitterness or the acidity. It is, quite literally, a drink made from the part we usually throw away.

This isn't a wellness invention dressed up as tradition. Date seed coffee has been used as a coffee substitute for well over a century, especially in date-growing regions and in the lean years when imported beans were scarce or unaffordable. There's an honest regulatory footnote worth adding here too: because it has such a long history of being drunk in Europe, date seed coffee is one of the few things in our pantry that isn't a regulatory novelty — a quiet contrast to the crops that genuinely are new to this market.

The appeal is straightforward. It's naturally caffeine-free, so there's no jitter and no afternoon crash — which makes it a real option for the evening, for anyone cutting down on caffeine, or during pregnancy, though as with anything it's worth a word with your midwife. And it isn't empty: roasted date seeds carry fibre, vitamin E, carotenoids, potassium, magnesium and a good load of the antioxidant polyphenols that survive the roast.

We'll stop short of where a lot of sellers go. You'll find date seed coffee marketed as a remedy for reflux, a blood-sugar treatment, a cure for this and that. We're not going to make those claims. What it is, honestly, is a warm, comforting, caffeine-free cup made from something that would otherwise be waste — and that is more than enough reason to put it in a mug. Good with a splash of plant milk and a little cinnamon.