Swallow those health fears as you savour your coffee

Put acrylamide warnings in perspective as you enjoy morning cuppa, says Jan Davis

IF you’re reading this while eating breakfast, hold onto that coffee until you get to the end. Coffee companies in California were last week ordered to place a cancer warning on their products because of acrylamide, a chemical produced in the roasting process.

The not-for-profit group Council for Education and Research on Toxics sued coffee roasters, distributors and retailers under a state law that requires warnings on a wide range of chemicals that can cause cancer. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge decided in favour of the complainants. He ruled that Starbucks and other companies had failed to show there was no significant risk from acrylamide produced in the coffee roasting process and so would have to put cancer warning labels on their products. But don’t panic. It is only part of the story, and it needs to be taken with a metaphoric grain of salt.

Acrylamide is a cancercausing chemical used to make plastics. It is also formed when many carbohydrate- based foods are cooked at temperatures of 140-165C.

It is a by-product of something called the Maillard reaction, the process that makes bread turn brown when it is toasted and chips turn golden-brown when they are fried. It is also found in breakfast cereals, biscuits and crackers. The actual TDI (total daily intake) above which acrylamide could affect your health is 2800 micrograms.

Around the world, people drink an estimated 2.25 billion cups of coffee every day, a daily ritual that makes coffee the second most valuable trading commodity in the world.

There are 0.45 micrograms of acrylamide in one cup of roasted coffee. That is one one-hundredth as much as would result in no more than a one-in-a-million increased chance of developing cancer as a direct result of acrylamide. You’d have to drink 6300 cups per day to get near the danger level. Even the most avid coffee drinkers would baulk at that, I reckon. In 2002, a UK study showed that crispy chips and roast potatoes, and

crunchy toast, contain relatively high levels of acrylamide. In 2015, the World Health Organisation added coffee, bacon and other processed meats to the list, along with alcohol and anything else that might bring a snippet of joy to our lives.

However, “relatively high” is a relative measure.

In a batch of chips cooked for longest, scientists recorded 1052 micrograms of acrylamide per kg. In roast potatoes, tests recorded 490 micrograms of acrylamide per kg in the crispiest batch. Very burnt toast contained 167 micrograms per kg. Eating 50 grams of processed meat every day would raise your risk of getting cancer from about 5 per cent to about 6 per cent.

For comparison, research on smoking and cancer found that men who smoked 25 cigarettes a day had a 24 times higher risk of developing lung cancer, a 2400 per cent increase.

However, while many foods may have an association with cancer, none has yet been classified as carcinogens. In 2016, the WHO updated its view on the links between a number of products (including coffee) and advised there is “no conclusive evidence for a carcinogenic effect”.

After the decision last week, J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, said “demonstrating a direct cause to cancer is very difficult. You always have to put a [suspected] risk into perspective … [There are] other areas we need to put more attention to. Smoking and obesity are some of those [risky] areas.”

This view was supported by Professor Bernard W. Stewart, a Cancer Council Australia adviser, who said the acrylamide debate was a storm in a teacup. He said “going one step further, there is a recognised body of evidence that drinking coffee actually reduces the risk of cancer”.

So, where does that leave coffee addicts?

The answer, in short, is that we should all stage a relatively silent breakfast protest (other than chewing and slurping sounds) and just get on with our lives. The old adage of everything in moderation should always be our guide.

I’ll leave the last word to a man in the street interviewed about the 2014 WHO report. He said “I would sooner a short life filled with bacon and happiness, than a long life of misery caused by lentils.”

Jan Davis is an agribusiness consultant based in Tasmania.