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WHO: Drinking Extremely Hot Coffee, Tea 'Probably' Causes Cancer (usatoday.com)
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.
McFact 1: MCDonald's knows that people like their coffee hotter than they can drink, as they rarely drink it immeidately, and often take it to another desintation, like work, to drink it, or like to hold the hot cup to warm cold hands.
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.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
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.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
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.
Also not that these things are true for groups of people, not about individuals.A doctor who investigates old people also noted that it is remarkable that of all the people she interviewed all had a very uplifiting and positive viuw on life.
She only interviews people who are older than 100. The first person they investigated was my great aunt who was the oldest person in the world at that moment.
She gave her body to science with the specific intructions that it should be used for others and as many as possible to learn. In a way, she open sourced her body.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.