WHO: Drinking Extremely Hot Coffee, Tea 'Probably' Causes Cancer (usatoday.com) 274
An anonymous reader writes from a report via USA Today: The World Health Organization reports that drinking coffee, tea and other beverages at temperatures hotter than 149 degrees Fahrenheit may lead to cancer of the esophagus. These hot beverages can injure cells in the esophagus and lead to the formation of cancer cells, said Mariana Stern, an associate professor of preventative medicine and urology at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine. But scientists did say that if you drink coffee at cooler temperatures, it is not only safe but it may decrease of the risk of liver cancer by 15%, according to research published in Lancet Oncology. Previously, the International Agency for Research on Cancer ruled coffee was a "possible carcinogenic" in 1991. The research involved Stern and 22 other scientists from 10 countries, who examined about 1,000 studies on more than 20 types of cancer.
mcdonalds to get sued? (Score:2)
They used to have Extremely Hot Coffee.
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Damn it, look what you did. You brought up the McDonald's Hot Coffee lawsuit on Slashdot, which always elicits 50+ posts of pedantic nerds re-debating the merits of the suit. Let it go, people. That was years ago.
Re:mcdonalds to get sued? (Score:5, Informative)
Snopes is your friend to help you from continuously embarrassing yourself by tossing out flippant remarks to things you seemingly know little or nothing about.
http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=107;t=000479;p=1
McFact No. 1: For years, McDonald's had known they had a problem with the way they make their coffee - that their coffee was served much hotter (at least 20 degrees more so) than at other restaurants.
McFact No. 2: McDonald's knew its coffee sometimes caused serious injuries - more than 700 incidents of scalding coffee burns in the past decade have been settled by the Corporation - and yet they never so much as consulted a burn expert regarding the issue.
McFact No. 3: The woman involved in this infamous case suffered very serious injuries - third degree burns on her groin, thighs and buttocks that required skin grafts and a seven-day hospital stay.
McFact No. 4: The woman, an 81-year old former department store clerk who had never before filed suit against anyone, said she wouldn't have brought the lawsuit against McDonald's had the Corporation not dismissed her request for compensation for medical bills.
McFact No. 5: A McDonald's quality assurance manager testified in the case that the Corporation was aware of the risk of serving dangerously hot coffee and had no plans to either turn down the heat or to post warning about the possibility of severe burns, even though most customers wouldn't think it was possible.
McFact No. 6: After careful deliberation, the jury found McDonald's was liable because the facts were overwhelmingly against the company. When it came to the punitive damages, the jury found that McDonald's had engaged in willful, reckless, malicious, or wanton conduct, and rendered a punitive damage award of 2.7 million dollars. (The equivalent of just two days of coffee sales, McDonalds Corporation generates revenues in excess of 1.3 million dollars daily from the sale of its coffee, selling 1 billion cups each year.)
McFact No. 7: On appeal, a judge lowered the award to $480,000, a fact not widely publicized in the media.
McFact No. 8: A report in Liability Week, September 29, 1997, indicated that Kathleen Gilliam, 73, suffered first degree burns when a cup of coffee spilled onto her lap. Reports also indicate that McDonald's consistently keeps its coffee at 185 degrees, still approximately 20 degrees hotter than at other restaurants. Third degree burns occur at this temperature in just two to seven seconds, requiring skin grafting, debridement and whirlpool treatments that cost tens of thousands of dollars and result in permanent disfigurement, extreme pain and disability to the victims for many months, and in some cases, years.
Re:mcdonalds to get sued? (Score:4, Informative)
The temperature of the McDonalds coffee machine specified in the lawsuit (195 F) was within the temperature range recommended by the National Coffee Association [ncausa.org] and Bunn [bunn.com], the largest manufacturer of coffee brewing machines sold in the U.S. 195 - 205 F.
The legal team for the woman surveyed temperatures of coffee machines at a half dozen restaurants nearby the McDonalds, and deceptively reported that temperatures at other restaurants were "as low as" 165 F. Which is a useless statement since one restaurant could've had a broken machine and the other 5 could've been serving coffee at a higher temperature than McDonalds and the statement still would've been true. This is classic tricky phrasing used by lawyers to mislead the jury. It's where the "20 degrees hotter" statement comes from. The adjective that belongs in front is "at most 20 degrees hotter," but because of the tricky way the lawyers phrased it people mistakenly think it's "at least". If their research had actually shown McDonalds was serving coffee too hot, they would've reported the temperature of all 6 other restaurants they surveyed, not just one.
Those 700 incidents were over a period of something like 13 years when McDonalds sold billions of cups of coffee. I number crunched the statistics once. If you lived 5 miles from McDonalds and drove there to buy a cup of coffee and took it home, you were more likely to die in a traffic accident than to scald yourself by spilling their coffee. If their coffee was too dangerous for the public, then so is every car on the road.
I want to say the figure was 18 billion cups of coffee served in that time, but honestly I don't recall exactly. If the 18 billion figure is correct, then those 700 incidents are equivalent to buying a cup of coffee at McDonalds every day, and spilling it on yourself once every 70,000 years. If anything, McDonalds should be getting an award for making a portable and minimal hot beverage container so safe.
Unfortunate, but ultimately irrelevant. The question isn't is hot coffee dangerous. Of course it is. So is hot tea,
Re:mcdonalds to get sued? (Score:4, Insightful)
within the temperature range recommended by the National Coffee Association [ncausa.org] and Bunn [bunn.com],
Two organizations that are far more concerned with the sale of coffee than safety. Whether there were dozens of other restaurants doing the same thing doesn't make it OK. It just means more companies are doing something unsafe. There is no reason to serve a drink just shy of boiling. Especially when cups can fail and nobody can drink it at that temperature anyway.
Re:mcdonalds to get sued? (Score:4, Interesting)
Serving at a temperature has absolutely nothing to do with consuming at that temperature.
Hot drinks are served hot because that brings out more subtle aromas when your mouth is around the surface of the drink and nose is just above it. If you take in a very small sip, you are not scalded for 3 reasons :
1. You might suck in the foam, that is of slightly lower temperature, and very low specific heat being mainly air.
2. Even if it is not foam, a sample from the surface is of a lower temperature than from deep within the cup. This way you can enjoy the aroma longer - which is over half the fun in most hot drinks anyway.
3. Heat from a very small sip quickly dissipates around your external skin - which is typically colder than internal body parts like gums, back of the tongue etc.
There are restaurants allowing / encouraging people to barbecue their food themselves - it doesn't mean people have to eat the 400 degree F food straight from the barbecue, or poke their eyes with firewood at 1000 degree F. All Americans should sue their own mothers for not permanently attaching glasses at birth which read "Caution : life has risks", except of course the mothers who have been prudent enough to do this.
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Re:mcdonalds to get sued? (Score:5, Informative)
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Fuck you.
Coffee is to be served hot. There's no problem with serving it hotter than other restaurants do. I'd see that as a good thing. Unless you can point to standards and regulations that require coffee to be served below a certain temperature, your "McFact No. 1" is a failure.
Hot coffee can cause burns. McDonalds settling cases is no different than a super market settling cases when idiots slip and fall despite the wet floor signs. it does not indicate a problem with the coffee, it indicates proble
Re:mcdonalds to get sued? (Score:5, Insightful)
They were caused by HER spilling the coffee she knew to be hot. If you buy a knife and cut yourself like an idiot, can you sue for the knife being too sharp?
There's a difference. The purpose of the knife is to be sharp enough to cut things. The purpose of coffee is to be hot enough to drink, not cause 2nd and 3rd degree burns. If the temperature exceeds the purpose, there's no good reason - especially since cups and lids can fail (especially when you're a mass market chain who goes as cheap as they can on things like that).
You can say the verdict was absurd, but the medical bills were just as absurd.
Re:mcdonalds to get sued? (Score:5, Informative)
Coffee is to be served hot.
No, not nearly that hot. Most drip coffee machines *brew* it at the McDonald's temperature, but it is kept at a much lower temperature (around 160F) in the carafe. One reason for this is that it rapidly loses quality if you keep it too hot.
People know what temperature coffee is almost universally served at, and they take the appropriate care. If you fill a cup of coffee from a coffee machine to the brim and carry it around, you just don't need to be that careful because it's just not that hot (unless it's from McDonald's). If you fill the same cup to the brim with water at a full rolling boil out of a pot, you're damned well going to be instinctively much more careful with it, because a small splash could give you serious burns.
You may now post one of your typical obscenity-laced abusive replies. It won't make you any less wrong.
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No, not nearly that hot. Most drip coffee machines *brew* it at the McDonald's temperature, but it is kept at a much lower temperature (around 160F) in the carafe. One reason for this is that it rapidly loses quality if you keep it too hot.
Great that you make a distinction between brewing temperature and serving temperature. How about you make a distinction between serving temperature and swallowing temperature too? And how it rapidly loses perceived quality when at a lower temperature?
This is how and why hot drinks are enjoyed : https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
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I don't buy these arguments. You see, I am a tea aficionado. I usually have about 30 kinds of tea at home - not the teabag crap but better quality loose teas (15 euros for 100 g on average, goes up to 100 euros for 100 g for a very good gyokuro). If the tea is too hot, most of the finer aromas are impossible to taste, the tea is just hot and bitter. Yes, it smells good, but tastes like crap. 40C is about the right drinking temperature, it still smells good but now also has a variety of taste.
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Tea doesn't have to be poured down your throat at the same temperature as in the cup. FYI.
When a hot drink is sold, it a lot about how LONG it will remain hot enough without spending on insulating container, rather than how high the temperature is right now. A simple plastic cap does triple duty as structural support to paper cup, protecting some aroma from escaping, and a rudimentary insulation.
PS : As far as tea is concerned, many teas - especially high quality ones, are even brewed at a lower temperature
Re:mcdonalds to get sued? (Score:4, Interesting)
McFact 2: coffee should be brewed at near-boiling, so "proper" temperature coffee is, by definition, stale.
McFact 3: serving cold coffee would lose them more money than the suits (at least according to bean counters, probably hired from Ford, after they were fired for counting the Pinto's beans).
McFact 3: the person in question literally poured it on herself. She took off the lid, that prevents deformation of the circular opening of the cup, then crushed the cup with her legs, forcing the liquid out and onto her body. Had she left the lid on, or used a cup holder, the incident would never have happened.
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May all be true, but it still hurts to see idiots get rewarded for doing something incredibly STUPID.
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You are looking at it the wrong way.
Who cares about the "idiot" who gets rewarded? This is about holding corporations accountable for dangerous products.
It's sort of like a car manufacturer who makes a car without any safety features. If someone gets hurt and the company knew that they could have made a safer product but didn't, that's a problem that should be corrected.
The law suit is about correcting a problem that then benefits everyone. Forget about the fact that one person got some monetary gain (at th
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Please stop diverting the topic towards irrelevant defenses of entitlement culture and the obsolescence of a responsible public.
The article claims a link between coffee and tea to cancer, but only via the temperature. So the pertinent question is:
HOW IS THIS ANY DIFFERENT THAN HOT WATER? Yes, I actually read the PDF document of the WHO report itself. It does not mention hot water, only that "hot beverages" can have a carcinogenic effect. Is click-baiting the only driving force behind "scientific" articles
Re:mcdonalds to get sued? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would except for those "McFact"s makes him sound like a Duche.
Now I admit McDonalds was justly accused for wrong doing in this case. But I don't get the hatetrid of McDonald's as a company.
They never say eat with us every day. They offer healthier options.
Oh they advertise towards kids. It is up to the parents to know that eating out is a rare treat not a nutrition plan.
They pay just as well if not better than Burger King, Wendies and Yumm food.
Now if want some bad business behavior Burger King sell to Tim Horton to avoid taxes.
Re:mcdonalds to get sued? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:mcdonalds to get sued? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't know, I don't eat their food as I don't find it appealing. Sure Mr AC was being a bit of a douche, but the facts were right - what did you want me to do, edit the post so it was more palatable?
Never been modded down for suggesting someone be modded up though, so people are probably a little sen-si-tive about the issue of criticizing McDonalds.
My concern was the lady who got hurt was being derided because people think she was being litigious, when in reality she suffered burns due to a company who didn't care enough about their customers to not have malfunctioning cup lids on super hot coffee served by industrial grade machines. What's the problem with turning them down a bit and why did it take a court case to do so?
They were told people were getting hurt, they did nothing, then the person who had the courage to face a multi-billion dollar company and all it's resources so others wouldn't get hurt gets ridiculed by people who haven't bothered to check the facts. Why should this poor woman suffer humiliation on top of injury when company X has millions of dollars of advertising money the news agencies want access to and can shape opinion.
There is a reason you aren't supposed to advertise to kids, so parents don't get nagged. They do and they all seem like a good reason for some vitrol and hatred to me.
So I don't really understand why you are shilling in marketing speak about 'healthy options', it sounds to me a lot like 'lite cigarettes'. Just don't try to allude that they care about anything else than another dollar.
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Now I admit McDonalds was justly accused for wrong doing in this case. But I don't get the hatetrid of McDonald's as a company.
American burger chains have historically been known for some very bad practices; McDonald was for many years the largest or even the only one in many countries, so they have become the posterboy for what they all used to do. It is true that they have all changed their behaviours somewhat, after consumer pressure and also because people started abandoning them in favour of smaller burger restaurants with significantly better quality food. But I can still remember, not so many years ago, when we used to refer
Re:mcdonalds to get sued? (Score:5, Informative)
It's the pink-coloured "milk gravy" that makes this truly nauseating.
I mean, really? And you have the nerve to get squeamish about haggis, FFS?!
Never mind the fact that hot dogs are probably as bad (in terms of what they contain) as haggis, if not far worse. Of course, *they* have the advantage of being ludicrously processed to the extent that there's no sign of their origins for ignorance-is-bliss Americans who like to argue about whether ketchup or mustard is the preferred topping for their sausageful of ground-to-atomic-size pigs' lips and assholes...
Pork brains in milk gravy, though? So far ahead of either in the retch-inducing stakes it's not even funny.
Re:mcdonalds to get sued? (Score:5, Informative)
Why the fuck was she trying to drink while driving? Why the fuck was she holding the coffee between her legs while driving?
She wasn't driving. She was in the passenger seat and the car was parked.
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Re:Not worried, frankly. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sometimes my muscle memory gets ahead of me, and previewing short comments is a hassle.
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You're oncologist's statement doesn't do anything to explain the reason a teenager might get cancer.
Sure it does. One of the main causes of teenagers getting cancer is not dying in infancy.
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Re: Not worried, frankly. (Score:3, Interesting)
I see you're following the standard Slashdot policy of letting no single comment ever lie with just a nod of the head, you must complain, whine, humiliate that in some way the poster is WRONG and MISSED THE POINT. Jesus, this annoying community.
That person's oncologist made a solid point, it's basically true, and wasn't trying to explain your hypothetical "teenager with cancer", even though guess what? Teens in medieval times got cancer too!
WHO is a useful organization that does a lot of useful things, but
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Anyway according to a physicist who's take on cancer is most interesting [youtube.com], it's a kind-of pre-programmed behaviour from the very early days of Eukaryotic evolution. That is to say, some cells will go into nuts mode when their general environment has deteriorated somehow. Note this guy was funded to look into cancer because researchers were bungling and faffing about, not really making any progress on it. He may be completely wrong of course.
Re:Not worried, frankly. (Score:4, Insightful)
Very similar to what my mother's coworker once said, that cancer is simply nature's failsafe to make sure that eternal life just does not happen. Survive all the other stuff and the cancer WILL get you eventually.
Here's the really, REALLY big question.
Do you want to live a life of fun, good food, fun entertainment and hot beverages, then die at 70, or do you want to live a life of measuring everything daily in a state of panic that you might get cancer and then die at 74 - that is, if you don't accidentally walk in front of a bus when you're 40?
Re:Not worried, frankly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the really, REALLY big question.
Do you want to live a life of fun, good food, fun entertainment and hot beverages, then die at 70, or do you want to live a life of measuring everything daily in a state of panic that you might get cancer and then die at 74 - that is, if you don't accidentally walk in front of a bus when you're 40?
The same question always comes up in discussions of health food, smoking, meat eating etc., and it's always a false dichotomy. The way you eat and exercise has an immediate effect on your quality of life, and more so as you get older. Also, you don't have to be a nutrition nazi to enjoy a better life -- think of the big picture instead of worrying about every single bite. The cognitive benefits may even help you avoid the bus accident.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Nature's failsafe? (Score:3)
Why would "Nature" (which is not a willful entity) "want" to make sure that eternal life doesn't happen? By the way, when a bacterium divides, or when a sperm (alive) and egg (alive) join, guess what -- they stay alive. The germline cells are, in a very real sense, immortal. They can die by the usual physical means (e.g. getting crushed, eaten, etc...) but are none
Re:Nature's failsafe? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not talking about a willful desire to avoid eternal life.
Bacteria is one thing. If larger lives, think mammals, reptiles, birds and so on were able to survive eternally then evolution would be stagnant - that, or the planet would eventually be so full of identical life that there would be no room for any more lives to be added.
It is difficult to put into words, especially since English isn't my native language, but nature and evolution would be in trouble if things were able to, well, not die. That is what makes cancer a failsafe, a means of renewal in the bigger picture, a certainty that older creatures will eventually give way to younger ones.
At the end of the day, cancer comes from the degradation of cells, shortening of some connectors whose names escape me at the moment. It is as close to a law of nature as you can get, a physical constraint on how long a given body can last. Some make it past 100, some only make it to 60, but those hundred years are still a long, LONG way from living forever.
You know you could just (Score:2)
And there are _lots_ of other good things in life besides junk food and cheap, burnt coffee.
Your question misses the point... (Score:2)
Do you want to live a life of fun, good food, fun entertainment and hot beverages, then die at 70, or do you want to live a life of measuring everything daily in a state of panic that you might get cancer and then die at 74 - that is, if you don't accidentally walk in front of a bus when you're 40?
Do the fun, good food, entertainment, hot/cold beverages and all that stuff you may die at 70. Agreed.
But how will you die? You will probably die of some medical complication attributed to your lifestyle choices which makes such a hit on your quality of life that death is probably a better option.
Re:Not worried, frankly. (Score:4, Interesting)
Very similar to what my mother's coworker once said, that cancer is simply nature's failsafe to make sure that eternal life just does not happen. Survive all the other stuff and the cancer WILL get you eventually.
Not necessarily; much research over the recent decade suggests that we die, eventually, of old age, when the body runs out of viable stem cells, because every time they divide, they lose a bit of the telomeres: the bit of DNA at the end of each chromosome, if my memory serves me. When the telomeres are too short, the cells can divide anymore. There was an interesting article a few days ago, about one of the world's oldest women - apparently all of a certain line of cells in her blood could be seen to arise from just two, individual stem cells, where a younger person would have - thousands? Certainly a lot more than two. When we run out of stem cells, we can no longer repair our bodies.
Cancer is seen more in the elderly for that very reason too. Every time cells divide, there is a certain likelyhood that something goes wrong; in a sense we all have cancer all the time. Fortunately our immune system is able to keep up, clearing out the failed cells that don't kill themselves in apoptosis. If the immune system is under too much pressure, whether it is because of lack of nutrition, stress or repeated tissue damage, the risk of cancer increases, so it isn't surprising if consuming too hot food or drinks can contribute to cancer. Every time a tissue is damaged, it is replaced by tissue that is slightly less well supplied with blood, which means that the immune system cannot patrol the tissue as effectively: cancer cells get the chance to survive longer.
Here's the really, REALLY big question.
Do you want to live a life of fun, good food, fun entertainment and hot beverages, then die at 70, or do you want to live a life of measuring everything daily in a state of panic that you might get cancer and then die at 74 - that is, if you don't accidentally walk in front of a bus when you're 40?
Can you only enjoy life by hurting yourself? I used to drink too much and eat loads of unhealthy things; I feel I enjoy life so much more now that I don't touch alcohol or eat foods with too much sugar, salt and fat. And it's not about feeling holier-than-thou, it has much more to do with the fact that I can enjoy doing things I would not have been able to before, like walking for a whole day in nature or working on one of my projects that involve heavy lifting and strenuous work. Getting drunk or high is fun, but only for a short while - it's like pissing youself to keep warm.
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Just a followup on my previous posting - I found the article I referred to: https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com]
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Do you want to live a life of fun, good food, fun entertainment and hot beverages, then die at 70, or do you want to live a life of measuring everything daily in a state of panic that you might get cancer and then die at 74 - that is, if you don't accidentally walk in front of a bus when you're 40?
If the last 20 of those 70 years are going to be plagued by vascular and respiratory diseases, and every other kind of malady caused by heavy drinking, unhealthy food smoking and lack of exercise, then those years are useless and painful.
I'd much rather take just a bit more care, get some exercise and have some actual quality of life, even in old age.
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I had a customer some years ago who was an oncologist. He told me that the reason we see so much cancer these days is that we live long enough to get cancer.
-jcr
And here I thought I would never find a more pointless statement that would somehow beat "everything causes cancer these days"...
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Thanks for your indifference.
My dad died of oesophageal cancer, so at least for me it's a grave concern. He did live to a reasonable age but the last 18 months of his life were miserably wretched and I wouldn't wish the condition on my worst enemy.
The survival rates are despairingly low whilst the public consciousness seems to focus on the 'sexier' cancers such as prostate, breast, melanoma, bowel, lung etc
That is the dumbest thing I've read all year (Score:2)
It could be worse... (Score:2)
Given my love of five-alarm chili, I have to suspect that at the other end of the system, things might not go well for me.
Hot coffee, NOT hot tea (Score:5, Informative)
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You quote applies just as much to hot tea as it does to hot coffee.
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My dad was a tea-drinker and had the cancer.
It's also prevalent in the South American nation of Uruguay where they drink copious amounts of yerba mate.
Re: Hot coffee, NOT hot tea (Score:2)
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It's an acquired taste, to be sure. To me it's more like oolong tea strained through a used athletic sock! :)
I prefer it to that other southern cone rite of passage, Fernet - ghastly stuff, even diluted with Coke.
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So does the original headline.
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Or even more plain (and obvious): "More cell replication leads to higher chances of mutation."
Be really surprised (Score:2)
If there weren't also benefits to hot drinks. They are pleasant and evolution tends to tie pleasure to desirable traits.
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Most of the world is more worried about starvation than obesity.
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Don't get m
65 C (Score:4, Insightful)
149F = 65C, guess which unit was used originally?
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The unit widely used in most scientific contexts - as well as most parts of the world?
I also stumbled over not having a clue how hot 149F would actually feel - and had to take a look at the original paper if the WHO actually published it in a nonsensical unit... ;-)
I have no clue how 149F would actually feel either, and I'm a Yank living in Yankland. "Probably somewhere between uncomfortable and painful" would be my guess, but, then, that would have been my guess had they said "65C" as well. I don't think I've experienced personal exposure to temperatures outside the range [-18,38]C/[0,100]F, so all I'd say about temperatures outside that range is "somewhere between uncomfortable and painful".
But now I'm curious enough that I might actually see if I can measure the
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A fresh cup of tea with milk that is perfectly drinkable will be over 80 Celsius. By the time it is down to 65 it would be in my view tepid and need drinking very quickly before it becomes vile.
Re:65 C (Score:4, Interesting)
Beef is cooked once it hits 58C (136.4F).
My personal preference for cooking a steak is to put it in a 60C oven for an hour and a half, tightly wrapped in cellophane. This will ensure that the meat is fully cooked, but still rare (it's completely pink throughout). I then throw it in a hot pan for a minute on each side, and it's done. Juicy and tender.
I got this method from a professional chef who cooks full fillets in this restaurant like this - when someone orders a fillet, he cuts a steak off the already-fully-cooked fillet and then just caramelises the outsides quickly in a hot pan. He'll use a thermometer to ensure that the beef is 58C before cutting it.
Other chefs use a Sous Vide to do this.
Obligatory plug: cold brewed coffee (Score:2)
Cold brewed coffee is not only economical & convenient, it's also got less acidity than hot brewed.
I like mine from TJs - 1 bottle lasts about 1-2 weeks for a small-time drinker like me.
the cups are alright (Score:3)
just tell me, again, why I would care what some aging band has to say about coffee?
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just tell me, again, why I would care what some aging band has to say about coffee?
Are you trying to put them down, just because they get around?
They're not trying to cause a big sensation.
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Are you trying to put them down, just because they get around?
I can't explain.
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either way, blood flows.
Human Pain Threshold (Score:5, Informative)
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I can't say I knew for certain that the human pain threshold was 106-108F, but everything else you said seems like common sense to me. I have to think the WHO was just looking for an excuse to publish another new "finding" more than providing anything really useful for people.
An awful lot of people don't even drink their coffee without diluting it with some creamer or milk first, and/or adding sugar and stirring. All of those processes will serve to drop its temperature too.
But everyone I know takes really
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I didn't RTFA but it seems somewhat unlikely to me that the hot liquid itself directly causes cancer. Wouldn't it be more likely if some kind of thermally induced (chemical) reaction, for example with saliva, would produce carcinogenic compounds?
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California Labeling? (Score:2)
I want to know how California will label coffee now.
This product is may or may not be know in the State of California to cause cancer
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This post made me go and make a coffee! (Score:2)
Murderer
Not specifically tea or coffee. (Score:2)
The quote from the report is
These results suggest that drinking very hot beverages is one probable cause of oesophageal cancer and
that it is the temperature, rather than the drinks themselves, that appears to be responsible
I don't know where they got 149F from, the report says 70C, which is 158F
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I don't know where they got 149F from, the report says 70C, which is 158F
What The Fine Report [www.iarc.fr] - or, rather, The Fine Press Release - says is both
and
What The Fine Q&A [www.iarc.fr] says is:
Words you can trust (Score:3)
I'd listen to this WHO guy if I were you all. He's a Doctor, after all.
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doctor jimmy?
when I'm pilled, I don't notice him.
Anything (Score:2)
That's why (Score:2)
"...drinking coffee, tea and other beverages at temperatures hotter than 149 degrees Fahrenheit may lead to cancer of the esophagus."
That's why I always cool my coffee to 148 degrees before drinking it. Ha ha, suck it, cancer!!
Tea Experiment (Score:2)
I drink hot tea, no milk, no sugar - lashings of the stuff. I happen to have a laser thermometer here so I decided I would find out the comfortable temperature that I start drinking and the time it takes to get there for a 250ml ceramic cup - the kettle is boiling now.
Temperature of ceiling 19C, walls 20C. Windows open, no breeze heater or AC on in my office. 8 seconds from boil to pour.
Now I really like a tea, and I'm usually wantin
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting. I would suggest that if you are just taking a sip when the tea is above 63C, then it would have lost several degrees by the time it hits your throat. Unless, that it, you swallow that sip really fast.
It interesting that the comfortable temperature to drink the tea is around 59C/60C. Our pain receptors tend to react to thing that are dangerous to us, and it's almost as if they are already saying that the tea it too hot and is dangerous. It would be interesting to see similar data from some o
Not at all surprising (Score:3)
Forcing your body to replicate cells more often leads to a higher chance of a mutation - that couldn't be more obvious. The more times you attempt a clean copy, the more chances for a bad copy. I think this would apply to any case where cells are constantly being damaged and repaired (sunburn).
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Physical exercise/exertion also leads to more cell damage and repair - but that is known/suspected to lower chances of cancer. So not any case, just some.
Missing from summary (Score:2)
Long suspected of yerba mate tea (Score:2)
There's already a long suspicion that the correlation between regular consumption of hot yerba mate tea in south america and incidence of esophageal cancer may be causative. It wasn't confirmed back in the days because there were other substances in the tea that might explain the higher incidence of cancer. Now there seems to be confirmation of this suspicion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
65C (Score:5, Insightful)
They actually said 65C, in case anyone was wondering why it was a strange number (149F).
I really wish people would report what WHO actually said, and then put the equivalent units in brackets:
"... at temperatures hotter than 65C (149F) ..."
I also wish people would report in SI units always. Put local units also, but always have SI, either as the primary number, or a secondary in brackets. The preference would be SI as primary and local in brackets as secondary. (remembering, of course, that 6.6bn people use SI units, and 350-400m use those other ones)
But that just my wish... I know it'll likely not happen. But one can always wish and hope...
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That's 65 Degrees Celsius (Score:2)
What sort of scientist uses Fahrenheit (Score:2)
When there is a perfectly good SI measurement for Temperature?
Celsius (Score:3)
>> 149 degrees Fahrenheit
I don't drink at Fahrenheit temperatures, so I should be safe.
Re:Can we stop indulging the special kid please? (Score:5, Informative)
For those of us in the real world, 149 degrees Fahrenheit = 65 degrees Celsius.
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For those of who aren't anti science
That's 608.67 Rankine
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I do find it hard to believe that the WORLD Health Organisation gave their numbers primarily in Fahrenheit.
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I do find it hard to believe that the WORLD Health Organisation gave their numbers primarily in Fahrenheit.
And, as you're probably implying here, they didn't [www.iarc.fr].
The only place where, as a Yank, I might currently find Fahrenheit more familiar than Celsius are 1) "how hot/cold is it in here/out there?" and 2) "do I have a fever?", just because I'm used to the ranges; living outside Yankland I'd probably pick up the "yow it's {hot,cold} out there!" and "better take it easy and stay in bed today" values pretty quickly.
65C and 149F are both "OK, how hot is that in real-world terms?" values for me; 65C is no more "so w
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And, as you're probably implying here, they didn't [www.iarc.fr].
Well, I was mostly having a go at Slashdot editors, but yes, that is what I was implying.
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65 degrees Celsius
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Hooray! For a while I was living in fear that my cancer was going to cause cancer!
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps because it's a combination of factors.
My late father drank roughly 10 cups of tea a day, smoked as a youth before quitting in his early thirties, was overweight and suffered from reflux.
These were his symptoms and while I can only offer personal anecdotes, yes I am worried about it.