The cancer risk has got to do with the temperature, not the drink itself and it applies not just to coffee but to all hot drinks – including water – according to findings by a team of cancer experts convened by it to study cancer links of beverages.
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They met at the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, in May to determine if drinking coffee, mate or other very hot beverages causes cancer.
The coffee cancer reversal was made after compiling decades of information pointing towards the health benefits of coffee including lowering; heart rate, neurological disorders, cancer, and the risk of Type 2 diabetes.
“Studies in places such as China, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Turkey and South America, where tea or mate is traditionally drunk very hot (at about 70 C) found that the risk of esophageal cancer increased with the temperature at which the beverage was drunk”, said the IARC.
Scientists reported that the many compounds in coffee are known to help lower inflammation or insulin resistance.
Another study in 1991 did link coffee to bladder cancer but again it was only “possibly carcinogenic” and World Health Organization has reversed this claim now saying that smoking and other outside factors were not taking into consideration at the time. The IARC, however, noted in a recent press briefing that this does not mean coffee is absolutely risk-free.
“This is another example that highlights the difficulties faced in weighing evidence for cancer risk from food”, cancer biologist and senior lecturer in pathology at the University of New South Wales Dr Darren Saunders said on Thursday. In 1991, the IARC announced coffee “possibly caused cancer”. This classification was based on what the IARC says was “limited evidence” that coffee was associated with a higher risk of bladder cancer.
What your favorite reason to drink coffee? Twenty-five years after classifying coffee as a possible carcinogen leading to bladder cancer, the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm has reversed course, and is expected to say on Wednesday that coffee isn’t classifiable as a carcinogen. The group concludes that coffee may in fact help protect against the risk of cancers of the liver and uterus. And it is increasingly being brewed around the world, beyond the traditional markets of the US and Europe. More than 150 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee were consumed globally in 2014.
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The one study carried out on cold mate found no association with oesophageal cancer, the report said. Larger and more well-designed studies now suggest the opposite: “it may be protective for some cancers”.
