Hot coffee could cause oesophageal cancer

vinni2 20 points 21 comments September 11, 2026
www.economist.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (10 comments)

cogman10

https://archive.is/c2mcm

dfxm12

This new investigation is an analysis of data on the tea- and coffee-drinking habits of nearly 1m adults in Britain. Those who said they preferred their beverages “hot” or “very hot” rather than “warm”, it found, had an increased risk of subsequently developing a type of oesophageal cancer that is called squamous-cell carcinoma. Headline seems somewhat spurious...

cogman10

> How hot is too hot? At the time IARC reviewed the scientific evidence, the available data suggested that the cancer risk goes up at drinks temperatures above 65°C. The new British study did not record drinks’ temperatures. Rather, it was up to participants to judge what drink temperature was warm, hot or very hot. Other investigations have found that the typical temperature of hot drinks in Britain and America is around 60°C. The study participants who said they drank their brew “warm” were, therefore, probably sipping it cooler than that. The takeaway message is, though, that the less hot your drink is, the better, says Gill Reeves from Oxford University, one of the study’s authors. 65C translates to ~150F.

mxfh

The study is called Hot Drinks and Oesophageal Cancer , so that's all you need to know about this kind of headline. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.70654

reedf1

I understand that this is research worth doing, but for the love of god, they need to improve the messaging of this to the general public because, as it currently stands, it's outright hysterical.

hgomersall

Here's another paper from 2010 which i remember appearing. I guess this is just more evidence: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2773211/

VyseofArcadia

I thought this was well known. Anecdata, but my wife's grandmother famously liked her coffee pretty much scalding, and we did indeed lose her to esophageal cancer.

morninglight

猫の舌 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%8C%AB%E8%88%8C

juancn

Any hot beverages: tea, coffee, mate, cocoa, etc.

puppycodes

"The evidence from human studies is based on observational data (which cannot prove that the link with cancer is causal). But experimental studies in animals point in the same direction." in mice strikes again

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