— OPINION — One common food safety method to prevent food poisoning is to heat the food to a temperature where bacteria are killed, and serving the food hot. We love hot food, and enjoy its aroma filling the air with mouthwatering appeal. Unfortunately, the hot food is also a food safety risk, since consuming food that is too hot is also a known cause of cancer.
It’s amazing that the temperature where people like to drink their coffee or tea is also the temperature which can cause esophageal cancer. But before you get all steamed up over the need to cool down, let’s consider the facts. According to a 2010 article in the International Journal of Cancer, entitled, High-temperature beverages and Foods and Esophageal Cancer Risk — A Systematic Review , “In this systematic review, we collected the published literature on the association between consuming tea, coffee, maté, or other high-temperature beverages or foods and risk of EC (Esophageal Cancer).
We analyzed the results for amount consumed and temperature of drinking separately. For tea and coffee, there was little evidence that the amount consumed was associated with EC risk, but the majority of the publications reported statistically significant increased risks associated with higher temperature of use. For maté, individual studies and the combined analyses showed increased risk of EC associated with both amount consumed and with temperature of drinking, and these two seemed to be independent risk factors.
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