Coffee and Cancer

[emannths]

I like French Press coffee but the dramatic increase in cancer risk from the soot sitting in the digestive system doesn't justify the additional flavor boosting oils in the French Press coffee.

Citation? "Dramatic increase" is very strong language. I've seen studies that correlate consumption coffee made without paper filters (e.g., french press, espresso) to increased cholesterol levels. I'd think you'd consume at least much "soot" if you ate chocolate or any well-browned food.

Here's what a 2006 review has to say. If consumption of unfiltered coffee increased cancer risk, the would have included it in the summary alongside the cholesterol-raising effects:

Unfiltered coffee is a significant source of cafestol and kahweol, which are diterpenes that have been implicated in the cholesterol-raising effects of coffee. The results of epidemiological research suggest that coffee consumption may help prevent several chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, Parkinson's disease and liver disease (cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma). Most prospective cohort studies have not found coffee consumption to be associated with significantly increased cardiovascular disease risk. However, coffee consumption is associated with increases in several cardiovascular disease risk factors, including blood pressure and plasma homocysteine. At present, there is little evidence that coffee consumption increases the risk of cancer. For adults consuming moderate amounts of coffee (3-4 cups/d providing 300-400 mg/d of caffeine), there is little evidence of health risks and some evidence of health benefits.

[EatNopales]

I like French Press coffee but the dramatic increase in cancer risk from the soot sitting in the digestive system doesn't justify the additional flavor boosting oils in the French Press coffee.

Citation? "Dramatic increase" is very strong language. I've seen studies that correlate consumption coffee made without paper filters (e.g., french press, espresso) to increased cholesterol levels. I'd think you'd consume at least much "soot" if you ate chocolate or any well-browned food.

Here's what a 2006 review has to say. If consumption of unfiltered coffee increased cancer risk, the would have included it in the summary alongside the cholesterol-raising effects:

Unfiltered coffee is a significant source of cafestol and kahweol, which are diterpenes that have been implicated in the cholesterol-raising effects of coffee. The results of epidemiological research suggest that coffee consumption may help prevent several chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, Parkinson's disease and liver disease (cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma). Most prospective cohort studies have not found coffee consumption to be associated with significantly increased cardiovascular disease risk. However, coffee consumption is associated with increases in several cardiovascular disease risk factors, including blood pressure and plasma homocysteine. At present, there is little evidence that coffee consumption increases the risk of cancer. For adults consuming moderate amounts of coffee (3-4 cups/d providing 300-400 mg/d of caffeine), there is little evidence of health risks and some evidence of health benefits.

Sweden, which has comparatively high stomach cancer rates, is the 2nd highest per capita consumer of coffee. The following study of Swedish women found a 22% increase risk of stomach cancer among coffee drinkers.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16841331

Research of stomach cancer rates in other countries found little to no correlation between coffee & stomach cancers.... a brief I came across in the Google News aggregator in the last year or so mapped the coffee drinking countries & their stomach cancer rates & found that the countries' where the typical coffee preparation involves filtering out the grounds had the low / no correlation between coffee consumption, while those where the grounds are not filtered.. such as in Swedish kettle boiled coffee.. there is the increased cancer risk correlation. The countries with high cancer correlation were geographically, ethnically & culturally widespread.

As to the comparison of "soot" from coffee, chocolate & food ash... coffee is known to be particularly "sticky" it lingers much longer in the gastrointestinal system, irritating the lining & in some extremes causing ulcers & bleeding... which is why its one of the first things restricted from patients with gastrointestinal disorders etc.,

Cancer seems to be a numbers game... the greater the exposure, in terms of quantity & time, the less likely our natural defenses can protect us... its not that the chemicals in coffee are necessarily so much more terrible than other things we consume.. its that the grounds stay so long in our body increasing exposure so much more.

Its similar to the under cooked beef / colon cancer relationship... its not that beef is inherently more cancerous than other flesh.. its that under cooked beef (particularly when combined with a diet low in soluble fiber) stays so long in our gut (close to a week) that it dramatically increases the exposure relative to other types of flesh.

[Mjx]

'Soot'? What soot? Are we talking about the powdery part of the coffee grounds? Unless your coffee has been roasted to the point of carbonizing, it would not contain soot.

Also, ash in food does not refer to soot (carbon), but to a variety of oxides and salts. A quick peek in your uni. chemistry books will elaborate on this. You can, of course, burn coffee down to ashes (e.g. if you're doing an assay), but this isn't happening in the human digestive tract.

With coffee beans, molds are probably a more serious concern than ash.

Neither Risk of stomach cancer in relation to consumption of cigarettes, alcohol, tea and coffee in Warsaw, Poland (Chow et al. 1999) nor Coffee and Health: A Review of Recent Human Research (Higdon & Frei 2007), among many, many others, supports the hypothesis that coffee consumption has a significant impact on the likelihood of developing stomach cancer (these articles weren't cherry-picked/mined to support what I'm stating: I used the search terms [health risks coffee]).

[Jenni]

Meh, life gives you cancer. Barring certain extreme and very avoidable things, you may as well just relax and enjoy. Might get hit by a bus tomorrow anyway...

[EatNopales]

'Soot'? What soot? Are we talking about the powdery part of the coffee grounds? Unless your coffee has been roasted to the point of carbonizing, it would not contain soot.

Also, ash in food does not refer to soot (carbon), but to a variety of oxides and salts. A quick peek in your uni. chemistry books will elaborate on this. You can, of course, burn coffee down to ashes (e.g. if you're doing an assay), but this isn't happening in the human digestive tract.

With coffee beans, molds are probably a more serious concern than ash.

Neither Risk of stomach cancer in relation to consumption of cigarettes, alcohol, tea and coffee in Warsaw, Poland (Chow et al. 1999) nor Coffee and Health: A Review of Recent Human Research (Higdon & Frei 2007), among many, many others, supports the hypothesis that coffee consumption has a significant impact on the likelihood of developing stomach cancer (these articles weren't cherry-picked/mined to support what I'm stating: I used the search terms [health risks coffee]).

Soot was used loosely to mean the grounds the seep through the mesh screen.

Your Polish article kind of supports my point... in Warsaw they drink Espresso which has very little grounds and little to no correlation in increased cancer risk, in Sweden they boil the grounds & drink unfiltered and have high correlation.

I did not cherry pick an article... I merely found one that pertained to an article I read a year ago.

[MikeHartnett]

Meh, life gives you cancer. Barring certain extreme and very avoidable things, you may as well just relax and enjoy. Might get hit by a bus tomorrow anyway...

I put myself entirely in this camp. Not that I'm supporting drinking French press coffee. In that arena, I'm in the vac pot/pour over/espresso camps.

[theakston]

If it is the amount of grounds in coffee you would expect Turkish / Greek coffee to be off the charts then?

[Kouign Aman]

In which case, chocolate covered espresso beans would be the worst. Anyone care to google?

[annabelle]

No one is getting out alive. I'll keep drinking coffee.

[EatNopales]

Meh, life gives you cancer. Barring certain extreme and very avoidable things, you may as well just relax and enjoy. Might get hit by a bus tomorrow anyway...

Its not a question of enjoying life for me... its about picking my vices... which in my case is often a daily regiment of half bottle of wine & a tequila or cognac night cap

I figure I have to make up for it with a moderate flesh, high fruit & vegetable, low coffee ground diet + organic comfortors & no MDF treated plywood in the house

[EatNopales]

If it is the amount of grounds in coffee you would expect Turkish / Greek coffee to be off the charts then?

Yup... I think both countries were in the moderately high stomach cancer rating. Although I should not the coffee ground drinking countries stomach cancer rates were moderately low compared to the East Asian countries... but still higher than their neighboring countries.

[Hassouni]

and why was East Asia so high?

[EatNopales]

and why was East Asia so high?

Whole other issue... there are links between very high consumption of sodium & fermented vegetables & stomach cancer.

[ScoopKW]

I figure I have to make up for it with a moderate flesh, high fruit & vegetable, low coffee ground diet + organic comfortors & no MDF treated plywood in the house

MDF treated plywood?

MDF and plywood are two entirely different things. But both come in sheet form. Often plywood is pressure treated -- with multi-quats that are found in a restaurant's sanitizer bucket -- to discourage pests.

MDF isn't treated, because it's almost as much glue as wood. Nothing wants to eat it.

Just avoid breathing the dust when working with it, and all is good.

[Mjx]

'Soot'? What soot? Are we talking about the powdery part of the coffee grounds? Unless your coffee has been roasted to the point of carbonizing, it would not contain soot.

Also, ash in food does not refer to soot (carbon), but to a variety of oxides and salts. A quick peek in your uni. chemistry books will elaborate on this. You can, of course, burn coffee down to ashes (e.g. if you're doing an assay), but this isn't happening in the human digestive tract.

With coffee beans, molds are probably a more serious concern than ash.

Neither Risk of stomach cancer in relation to consumption of cigarettes, alcohol, tea and coffee in Warsaw, Poland (Chow et al. 1999) nor Coffee and Health: A Review of Recent Human Research (Higdon & Frei 2007), among many, many others, supports the hypothesis that coffee consumption has a significant impact on the likelihood of developing stomach cancer (these articles weren't cherry-picked/mined to support what I'm stating: I used the search terms [health risks coffee]).

Soot was used loosely to mean the grounds the seep through the mesh screen.

Your Polish article kind of supports my point... in Warsaw they drink Espresso which has very little grounds and little to no correlation in increased cancer risk, in Sweden they boil the grounds & drink unfiltered and have high correlation.

I did not cherry pick an article... I merely found one that pertained to an article I read a year ago.

When launching a would-be scientific discussion, precision is important, and 'soot' is finely powdered carbon.

My comment about not cherry-picking the article referred to what I hadn't done, not to whether or not you had

Regardless, the connection between drinking moderate amounts of coffee and cancer don't seem supported; there's no discussion of Swedish coffee preparation in that article, either.

[annabelle]

Regarding chosing one's vice; you would be better off skipping the alcohol all together.

[Honkman]

There are many pseudo scientific correlation you will often read in newspapers about certain things you eat or drink are good for you based on these pseudo cross correlation. If you look long enough you can pretty much correlate everything especially in the food sector. Marion Nestle touches on this in one of her books and how it is used by industry to lobby for certain things but isn't based on any even decent science / same in this case with coffee and cancer. As long as you don't have clearly defined, controlled clinical studies to examine exact described ingredients and endpoints these assumptions are not based on any science and meaningless

[Kouign Aman]

Valid conclusions can be obtained from retrospective data, analysis of trends, and questionaires - these can be the source data in a welldesigned experiment, for example the identification and description of fetal alcohol syndrome. Do you propose we should design a double-blind randomized clinical trial to determine if maternal alcohol intake affects fetal development?

I think not. I think the recognition by an OB that he was seeing a weird pattern of infant facial features, followed by a questionaire clinical study (experiment) to determine maternal conditions and other possible factors over several years to identify a cause was not invalid.

So, studies for correlations and dause/effect relations between food intake and cancer are valid. The risk is that correlation will be mistaken for causation, as you acknowledge. To differentiate between cause and correlation requires care, and often additional studies, to further define the relationshp.

So, do those who eat coffee beans also experience higher rates of stomach cancer?

That would tend to support the 'grounds' intake theory. Of course, it could be the act of boiling the coffee that does it, or perhaps countries with gritty coffee also like smoked fish.

Data mining is an awesome thing, in both what it can truely discover, and the awesome errors it can result in.

Edited December 1, 2011 by Kouign Aman (log)

[Panaderia Canadiense]

Add another to the "I'm gonna die anyhow" camp here. Besides which, the idea isn't to arrive at the end of the line in a perfectly preserved vehicle - it's to come in screechin on two rims.

[Snadra]

Add another to the "I'm gonna die anyhow" camp here. Besides which, the idea isn't to arrive at the end of the line in a perfectly preserved vehicle - it's to come in screechin on two rims.

Ahem, two adequately caffeinated screeching rims, if you please.

[Panaderia Canadiense]

Yes, of course. If you're going to run cool that way, it has to be heavy, caffeinated fuel. (And probably at least 120 overproof and bacon-flavoured as well. )

[toolprincess]

Everything in moderation. Or live ( and die) in a bubble.

[Toliver]

and why was East Asia so high?

Whole other issue... there are links between very high consumption of sodium & fermented vegetables & stomach cancer.

I believe the issue in question was the source of the preservation/fermentation in East Asia...which was, to a large extent, sea water. An article I read on the subject made a distinction between this type of fermentation versus home pickling via vinegar which is more of a norm in the western world (and doesn't have a corresponding high rate of stomach cancer).

[Honkman]

Valid conclusions can be obtained from retrospective data, analysis of trends, and questionaires - these can be the source data in a welldesigned experiment, for example the identification and description of fetal alcohol syndrome. Do you propose we should design a double-blind randomized clinical trial to determine if maternal alcohol intake affects fetal development?

I think not. I think the recognition by an OB that he was seeing a weird pattern of infant facial features, followed by a questionaire clinical study (experiment) to determine maternal conditions and other possible factors over several years to identify a cause was not invalid.

So, studies for correlations and dause/effect relations between food intake and cancer are valid. The risk is that correlation will be mistaken for causation, as you acknowledge. To differentiate between cause and correlation requires care, and often additional studies, to further define the relationshp.

So, do those who eat coffee beans also experience higher rates of stomach cancer?

That would tend to support the 'grounds' intake theory. Of course, it could be the act of boiling the coffee that does it, or perhaps countries with gritty coffee also like smoked fish.

Data mining is an awesome thing, in both what it can truely discover, and the awesome errors it can result in.

The main conclusions you might get from those retrospective studies is that there might be potentially a link or not between a disease and some substance or substance mixture but nothing more. Unfortunately that's not terrible helpful as the relation between a disease and its cause is rarely black and white and it is critical to get an understanding on many other things as for example exposure levels, genetic predispositions, environmental influences etc. etc which you will hardly get out of those analyses. I agree that it is for most scenarios not possible to set up adequate clinical studies and that is exactly the reason why we will always over- and underestimate (or simply not understand) influences of food ingredients and diseases (and we haven't even discussed that it is even more complex as something like coffee (or any other food) contains myriads of substances where one of them (or combination thereof) could have an positive or negative effect). Studies for correlations between food intake and cancer are good get scientists and companies some news exposure but are nearly always misleading and it often takes just a few years until a study will be published about the same correltation but with complete different results.

[annabelle]

Cancer is a wiley booger. You can take all the care in the world with your diet, excercise, proper sleep, not smoking, etc and still it creeps up like a theif in the night. Conversely, you can do everything "wrong" and still not get it.