Coffee Requires Cancer Warning, California Judge Rules (cnbc.com)

Scientists haven't rendered a verdict on whether coffee is good or bad for you but a California judge has. He says coffee sellers in the state should have to post cancer warnings. From a report: The culprit is a chemical produced in the bean roasting process that is a known carcinogen and has been at the heart of an eight-year legal struggle between a tiny nonprofit group and Big Coffee. The Council for Education and Research on Toxics wanted the coffee industry to remove acrylamide from its processing -- like potato chip makers did when it sued them years ago -- or disclose the danger in ominous warning signs or labels. The industry, led by Starbucks, said the level of the chemical in coffee isn't harmful and any risks are outweighed by benefits. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said Wednesday that the coffee makers hadn't presented the proper grounds at trial to prevail.

Comments

Pointless labels

[Anonymous Coward]

When everything has to have a warning label the labels start being ignored. Maybe it's time to just start saying everything in California causes cancer and call it a day?

California and carcinogen labels

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

When are they putting a label on the Welcome to Los Angeles sign on the freeway. Plenty of nasties in that air.

yada yada

[sxpert]

everything is a carcinogen in california...

numb to actual danagers

[mehtars]

Putting too many warning labels has the habit of making people numb to actual dangers and warning labels.

Wish we could stop with "good/bad for you" labels

[swb]

I really wish we could stop with foods being either "good" or "bad" for you. My guess is even if you actually get the science to say if something is good or bad, the chances are that it's really only very marginally good or bad for you at reasonable/non-OCD intake levels, not so good or bad that it will swing the health of a normal person.

Even foods/beverages that are demonstrably good or bad for you aren't either in very small amounts. Sugar isn't good for you, but if I ate a glazed donut once a year? It's not going to change anything.

I'm sure there's some marginal value in looking at high-volume consumption foods like coffee, but at this point people have been drinking it for a couple of centuries and tons of it over the last century and we don't have a plague of people dying from coffee poisoning.

Other than the obvious lack of utility for "good' and "bad" labels, all it does is encourage people to over-consume "good" foods, needlessly avoid "bad" foods, all magnified by a marketing tsunami of food companies touting their products as beneficial.

Idiotic

[Geoffrey.landis]

Indeed, this is idiotic.

There is ample evidence showing that coffee is surprisingly good for you. Saying it has to be labelled a "carcinogen" is doing nothing to help anybody's health, but is contributing to people ignoring warning labels, which is not a good thing. California's laws are stupid and counterproductive.

  http://time.com/4116129/coffee-longer-life/

http://www.webmd.com/alzheimer...

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/this-is-your-brain-on-coffee/

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/16/456191657/drink-to-your-health-study-links-daily-coffee-habit-to-longevity

Re:Idiotic

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because coffee has known health benefits does not mean that there aren't any downsides that can be improved.

Re:Idiotic

[syn3rg]

I'm beginning to think California judges may need a stupidity warning label.

Re:Idiotic

[syn3rg]

If only that lawyer had to pay court costs and fines if they lost.

Re:Idiotic

[cayenne8]

"Land of fruits and nuts" indeed.

Indeed!!

And yet...we STILL allow CA to dictate so much about what happens and what is allowed across the US.

They have waaaaay too much power over what the rest of us have to deal with in our lives...from gas mileage, to restrictions on what you can/can't buy or manufacture, etc.

Hell we give Californial Special Waivers all the time it seems from Federal laws.

If you wanna live in the land of flakes and nuts, ok, but we shouldn't allow it all to spread across the nation of states that have very different populations, geographic needs and environments.

Re:Idiotic

[jwhyche]

Indeed, this is idiotic

That seems to be the status quo for California. One idiotic decision after another. Constant irresponsible policies by Governor Moonbeam, boarder line treasonous statements by the attorney general, and obstruction of justice by Oakland city mayor. The worse homeless problem in America and almost 1 trillion dollars in public debit. I could go on.

If the proposed Constitutional convention called by the states ever gets off the ground, maybe one of the things that should be put on the table is the dissolving of California as a state, Returning it to the status as a territory. That way a proper, more sane government body could be appointed to over see the affairs of the citizens of the territory.

We would also remove California's undo influence over the rest of the states. By returning it to a territory we would no longer have to suffer the insane rantings of fools like Maxine Waters in congress. Or the incompetent sessions of the 9 circuit. It would free the rest of from idiotic rules, like this one, put forth by a minority of the over all population.

Once sanity is returned, in say 20 years, then we could look at readmitting California as a state. But I would propose that we break up California into several smaller states. This would help prevent this issue in the future and not require such drastic action.

Re:Idiotic

[jwhyche]

Let California go bankrupt!

I actually thought of that. As appealing as the prospect is of sitting back and letting California self immolate, the consequences of such action is unthinkable. For one thing the actual process of waiting for California to go bankrupt could take years. During that time the debit would continue to rise. By the time the bankruptcy process was started it could be double what it is now, or higher. Plus the process of fixing the actual issues that caused the bankruptcy in the process would all on the same people that caused it. Incompetent elected official put in office by a large group of naive, but well meaning, voters.

That, and we would still have to endure the insane screeching of that fool Maxine Waters and the idiotic rulings of the Ninth Circuit.

Just as in bankruptcy, once the state was dissolved the rest of the states would still have to assume the burden of the public debit. But now competent people could be appointed to manage the issue. It is a better solution that letting the state fail on it's on.

If everything is $property, nothing is

[Opportunist]

If everything is critical, nothing is. If everything is important, nothing is. If everything is a carcinogen, nothing is.

Unless you put a qualifier next to it, it's meaningless because it voids any importance the label could originally have had. There is a difference in how likely it's gonna kill you, and this has to be stressed. Yes, working as a liquidator for Chernobyl, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee are all likely going to cause cancer in you. But one is quite certainly going to kill you quite soon, one is likely to kill you somewhere in the future and one is ... well, we don't know but might kill you ... at some point in time.

And unless we establish some kind of way to differentiate between them, such labels will lose all meaning they might have had. If I can't avoid doing or eating something that is labeled as "causes cancer", why bother trying to avoid any of them?

In keeping with other precedents

[Gonoff]

This sounds to be in line with previous court judgements. Yes your coffee is hot. Put a sign on it.

Perhaps they should put "Crush danger" on sacks of it. If a big enough bag is dropped on someone from a sufficient height it may injure. After all, how many such bagfulls of this need to be drunk in order to significantly increase the chance of cancer?

Which kills the most people prematurely per year in the USA - coffee cancer, obesity, air pollution or motor vehicle accidents? Which causes the most across the rest of the planet? Lets deal with all of the dangers buts lets set some priorities, Deal with the ones that cause the most damage first.

For comparison of importance, which has caused the most questionable election results - illegal immigrants, fraudulent voters, jerrymandering or termites?. We can probably deal with the termites later.

Re:Well, if coffee needs a cancer warning...

[hey!]

There's a word for bread toasted as lightly as possible... it's "bread".

Good source [Re:Idiotic]

[Geoffrey.landis]

I could find a hundred other sources saying the same thing. Those just happened to be the ones at the top of my list.

Sorry somebody downmodded you as troll: I think they saw that you were gratuitously slamming news sources, and didn't realize you were in fact actually on topic, since you were commenting on the sources I linked.

With that said, however, your comment on the sources was edging toward troll, or possibly simply prejudice. It doesn't make a whit of difference that the New York Times is "part of the big-4 media monopoly"; their Tuesday Science Section continues to be one of the best sources for science and health information. Sorry you don't like them because they don't fit your personal bias, but you very much need to understand that it is you, and not them, who has the bias.

And, by the way, if there are four of them, it's not a monopoly.