Slashdot Mirror
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.
the coffee makers hadn't presented the proper grounds
So what do they do with all their waste product?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Proper grounds. I see what you did there.
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?
When are they putting a label on the Welcome to Los Angeles sign on the freeway. Plenty of nasties in that air.
everything is a carcinogen in california...
Putting too many warning labels has the habit of making people numb to actual dangers and warning labels.
And why's that? Because the more coffee is roasted, the more carcinogen it has. And why Starbucks? Before heavily roasting coffee is a way to give ordinary cheap beans a stronger flavor.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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.
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
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I have no idea why anybody would even litigate this. I have yet to see a single thing there that doesn't have this warning.
... then so does toast.
Acrylamide isn't an additive. Trace quantities of acrylamide are a byproduct of the Maillard (browning) reaction in certain foods. If you think about it, toasted bread isn't that different from roasted coffee; it's dry heat applied to seed proteins and sugars. People have been consuming it pretty much as long as they've been cooking things other than meat.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm kind of curious, are doors in California required to have warnings along the lines of "Warning: outside contains sunlight, which is known to the state of California to cause cancer."?
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
They should put warning labels on research as well. It has been proven that scientific research causes cancer in rats.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Trouble is that the only good food is kale. And kale is inedible.
Does make an OK packing material if properly dried
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
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.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Because the people behind Prop 65 (which created this system) came from two distinct camps.
One camp wanted to eliminate some pretty toxic things that were commonly found in household products and drinking water.
Another camp believes in eliminating all "chemicals" because they must be harmful. Otherwise they'd be "natural".
The former group had a good point. The latter group is the left-wing equivalent of chemtrails believers. But the latter group was necessary to get the proposition passed.
It's not a problem with warnings themselves, but of weighing the level of risk. The labels don't give one any sense of risk degree. Perhaps we need a rating system, similar to movie ratings or Dept. of Homeland Security's "Homeland Security Advisory System" rating colors (which have since been altered in confusing ways).
By the way, the warnings are required by Proposition 65, which was voted into CA law. It's not meddling gov't, but meddling voters.
Let's make it better instead of throwing it out.
Table-ized A.I.