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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.
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
For those of us in the real world, 149 degrees Fahrenheit = 65 degrees Celsius.
The non-sensational headline for those of us that don't care for them would read: "Repeatedly damaging the tissue lining the esophagus with very hot liquids probably contributes to an increased chance of that tissue becoming cancerous."
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.
The human pain threshold for temperature is 106-108F (41-42C). Unless you're a masochist who likes to shotgun boiling hot liquids, so long as you don't get a painful sensation, you're fine. Realize that even if the liquid is much higher than this temperature, so long as you sip small quantities of it, it will rapidly cool to something closer to your body temperature when it enters your mouth. Most folks instinctively do this, because pain sucks.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
The temperature of the McDonalds coffee machine specified in the lawsuit (195 F) was within the temperature range recommended by the National Coffee Association and Bunn, 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,
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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.
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.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
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.
The "195 - 205 F" recommended temperature range you quote is the brewing temperature, not the serving temperature. Unless McDonalds serves each cup as soon as it's brewed, and I doubt that they are, they are purposely holding the temperature high before serving it. In fact, keeping brewed coffee hot diminishes its flavor, so what they are doing makes no sense except to keep some customers from complaining that by the time they brought their cup of coffee to the office it wasn't hot anymore.
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...
Arguably the most stomach-churning food I've ever seen came from the Americans:- Pork brains in milk gravy (More here).
:-6
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.
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