How hot is too hot? (cancer risks from hot drinks)

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debunix
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Sun Mar 07, 2021 10:23 am

greengaiwan wrote:
Sat Mar 06, 2021 6:36 pm
"A friend of mine, a tea seller, died of stomach cancer a couple years ago and it prompted me to wonder again about the safety of teas. This person would have been drinking much more tea than the average person, some of it sprayed with pesticides in regions with low/no pesticide application compliance."

Also we should keep in mind that consuming beverages and foods at high temperatures increases risk of mouth and throat cancers. So I guess you could say we are all at risk for this unless we are sure to cool our tea (and any other consumable) enough before drinking it. I'm not sure the exact temperatures but there is research supporting this. I hate burning my tongue anyway so I usually do stacked steeps into a bowl and let the bowl cool off until very warm. I found a quick link from 2019:

"The study, published on Wednesday in the International Journal of Cancer, found that people who drank more than three cups of tea at a temperature over 140 degrees increased their risk of developing squamous cell esophageal cancer by about 90 percent."
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/esophagea ... %20percent.
Baisao wrote:
Sat Mar 06, 2021 7:41 pm
greengaiwan- Thanks for post this. I think most of the tea I drink is on the cooler side by the time it gets to my lips.

I use a Bluetooth heated mug sometimes for tea at work. It was a gift from my company. I have it set at 130° and that seems plenty hot to me, which surprised me the first time I used it.
greengaiwan wrote:
Sat Mar 06, 2021 11:41 pm
Baisao wrote:
Sat Mar 06, 2021 7:41 pm
greengaiwan- Thanks for post this. I think most of the tea I drink is on the cooler side by the time it gets to my lips.

I use a Bluetooth heated mug sometimes for tea at work. It was a gift from my company. I have it set at 130° and that seems plenty hot to me, which surprised me the first time I used it.
Yeah, I have been surprised at how hot the "drinkable" temperatures are. Some people (like my mom) really enjoy a boiling hot drink. Then she sips off the edge. Your heated mug sounds really nice, I got the Mr. Coffee mug warmer a few months ago and it does a good job of keeping my tea from going cold but that is about it lol. I use it a lot though!
belewfripp wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 7:00 am
greengaiwan wrote:
Sat Mar 06, 2021 6:36 pm
"The study, published on Wednesday in the International Journal of Cancer, found that people who drank more than three cups of tea at a temperature over 140 degrees increased their risk of developing squamous cell esophageal cancer by about 90 percent."
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/esophagea ... %20percent.
Thanks for posting this - as someone who had an endoscopy last year with "less than great" (but not cancerous or pre-cancerous) findings, I'm glad to know this. Generally-speaking, I do also hate consuming things that are too hot and am somewhat amazed by those who do. A couple of decades ago when I worked at a pizza place in the southern U.S., we had customers who would start eating their pizza as soon as it came out of the oven. Maybe my tongue is just weak but I don't know how you do that and not burn your mouth.
debunix wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 9:40 am
I drink a lot of tea, but I am cautious of my tongue, and I rarely have sessions where I am drinking it hot-hot-hot. Fine sheng puerh and Dan Cong would be the key exceptions where I sip hot tea quickly. With most teas, when I'm drinking infusions that were brewed very hot, I either wait a bit for them to cool, or I slip in a bit of cool water from a pitcher if it is a delicate tea that will not tolerate waiting, or if I am in a hurry. Very little of what I drink likely meets that threshold.
LeoFox wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 9:50 am
https://www.teachat.com/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=24811

Maybe we should move the hot temp discussion to a new thread. The link between hot temp and esophageal cancer is strong and verified across multiple studies.
Mods, please feel free to delete this post if you port over the originals......
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mbanu
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Sun Mar 07, 2021 11:41 am

One helpful thing is to use your lips -- I don't mean this sarcastically, a lot of people sort of take "down the hatch!" literally and treat their lips as being just there to cover the teeth. :) I know folks who regularly burn their mouths eating pizza because the first parts that come into contact with it are the roof of their mouth and the middle of their tongue. Lips are usually pretty good at temperature assessment.
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Balthazar
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Sun Mar 07, 2021 12:27 pm

mbanu wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 11:41 am
Lips are usually pretty good at temperature assessment.
If I recall, the correlation is found at temperatures above 60 degrees Celsius. For people such as myself, the issue is not so much that we don't know that the drinking temperature is above what might be considered "safe" (or sheer impatience). It's that we find teas (and other beverages) more enjoyable at these higher temperatures. I know I do (same thing with soups).

As for the link, as @LeoFox mentioned it's been verified across a number of studies (conducted on - if memory serves - people in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America, probably elsewhere too).

A large Chinese study gave cause for some optimism among us "non-smokers and non-excessive alcohol consumers" (except for stomach cancer..):
When we restricted analyses to non-smokers and non-excessive alcohol consumers to minimize confounding, tea consumption was not associated with all cancers (daily consumers who added tea leaves > 4.0 g/day vs. less-than-weekly consumers: HR, 1.03; 95%CI, 0.93-1.13), lung cancer (HR, 1.08; CI, 0.84-1.40), colorectal cancer (HR, 1.08; CI, 0.81-1.45) and liver cancer (HR, 1.08; CI, 0.75-1.55), yet might be associated with increased risk of stomach cancer (HR, 1.46; CI, 1.07-1.99). In both less-than-daily and daily tea consumers, all cancer risk increased with the amount of tobacco smoked or alcohol consumed. Our findings suggest tea consumption may not provide preventive effect against cancer incidence.
... but I know there's been many other studies (e.g. this recent Iranian one) showing the correlation even after controlling for alcohol consumption and smoking.


Perhaps this is another point in favor of grandpa brewing.
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belewfripp
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Sun Mar 07, 2021 1:19 pm

Balthazar wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 12:27 pm
mbanu wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 11:41 am
Lips are usually pretty good at temperature assessment.
If I recall, the correlation is found at temperatures above 60 degrees Celsius. For people such as myself, the issue is not so much that we don't know that the drinking temperature is above what might be considered "safe" (or sheer impatience). It's that we find teas (and other beverages) more enjoyable at these higher temperatures. I know I do (same thing with soups).
When I mentioned eating pizza, I didn't mean they started to eat and then their lips told them to stop - I mean they were actually eating it super hot. Your explanation, Balthazar, is what I have kind of had to assume, as well as the possibility that different peoples' oral temperature sensitivities are just different. The many days I have had a burned upper lip in the area where it encounters hot beverages first are a testament to my use of my lips to check temperatures first. :D

The thing I find interesting about the consumption of hot beverages/linked to cancer thing is that even when I get some tea in my mouth that's a bit too hot (but not hot enough to spit out or reject) is that I will swish it around first and let it cool down before swallowing. For those who are hot beverage/hot food eaters (above 60° C/140° F), are you swallowing it at the hotter temperature, too?

Also - caffeine weakens the flap that keeps stomach acid out of the esophagus and we also know that some teas can be irritating to the stomach in general (but not for everyone). I see where some confounding factors have been controlled for in some studies, but can we say "hot beverages cause esophageal/stomach cancer" or is it possible the most-prevalent hot beverages are coffee and tea, and both have caffeine (to the point that those with reflux, like me, are often advised to stop drinking them or adjust our consumption), so it's not the tea, so much as it is the caffeine/some kinds of tea?
Balthazar wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 12:27 pm

A large Chinese study gave cause for some optimism among us "non-smokers and non-excessive alcohol consumers" (except for stomach cancer..):
For many years, I smoked. And then I quit, but took up using Swedish snus, which is higher-quality, and seems to have fewer associated health risks, than American smokeless tobacco. A couple of large studies published in The Lancet and the International Journal of Cancer failed to find an increased cancer risk causality for Swedish-style snus. However, you can't just transplant something from one culture into another and draw correlations - there are undoubtedly other things about living in Sweden that are different from other places. Maybe Swedish snus is not a health risk for Swedes, but if you live in America, it is, because there are a million other variables not being held constant in that comparison.

I wonder the same thing about the Chinese study and maybe that's why it found no risk increase (except for stomach cancer) even after excluding the obvious suspects (tobacco and booze), but other studies did?
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Balthazar
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Sun Mar 07, 2021 1:33 pm

belewfripp wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 1:19 pm
When I mentioned eating pizza, I didn't mean they started to eat and then their lips told them to stop - I mean they were actually eating it super hot.
Yeah, I do this with pizza too (and always regret it the day after, when the roof of my mouth has "cheeze burn" and I can't enjoy my tea). With most other solid foods though, I usually wait longer than most people I know before I start eating. Probably something wrong with me, definitely very inconsistent in how I approach hot food and beverages.
belewfripp wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 1:19 pm
The thing I find interesting about the consumption of hot beverages/linked to cancer thing is that even when I get some tea in my mouth that's a bit too hot (but not hot enough to spit out or reject) is that I will swish it around first and let it cool down before swallowing. For those who are hot beverage/hot food eaters (above 60° C/140° F), are you swallowing it at the hotter temperature, too?
I do the swishing and swirling too, but have no idea how much the temperature has been reduced before it goes down. Probably do less of it after a gulp or two. There seems to be a desensitization effect when the throat gets "warmed up" (so to speak) for the higher temperatures after a few gulps.
belewfripp wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 1:19 pm
I wonder the same thing about the Chinese study and maybe that's why it found no risk increase (except for stomach cancer) even after excluding the obvious suspects (tobacco and booze), but other studies did?
Perhaps, but I know I have seen Chinese (and Japanese) studies finding an increased risk even when controlling for factors such as smoking and excessive alcohol consumption too (and the study I linked to looks at tea consumption in general, not the consumption of hot tea specifically). I'll see if I can dig them out later, if someone else doesn't beat me to it.
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belewfripp
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Tue Mar 09, 2021 12:38 pm

Posting my replies to a couple of new posts from the 'Pesticide etc.' thread over here, since they are related to food/drink temperature rather than pesticides.
greengaiwan wrote:
Tue Mar 09, 2021 8:01 am
belewfripp wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 7:00 am

Thanks for posting this - as someone who had an endoscopy last year with "less than great" (but not cancerous or pre-cancerous) findings, I'm glad to know this. Generally-speaking, I do also hate consuming things that are too hot and am somewhat amazed by those who do. A couple of decades ago when I worked at a pizza place in the southern U.S., we had customers who would start eating their pizza as soon as it came out of the oven. Maybe my tongue is just weak but I don't know how you do that and not burn your mouth.
Oof, I don't understand that either. Yeah I don't like things too hot! There are many carcinogenic things but temperature at least is one we have a lot of control over. Good luck on future endoscopies, glad you got checked out : )
Thanks - I have another in 3 weeks that should go better thanks to changes in the tea I drink (no more young sheng unless it's the already-mild stuff that will probably age badly).
aet wrote:
Tue Mar 09, 2021 8:40 am
" A couple of decades ago when I worked at a pizza place in the southern U.S., we had customers who would start eating their pizza as soon as it came out of the oven. Maybe my tongue is just weak but I don't know how you do that and not burn your mouth. " ;-DDD

Should see Chinese slurping their noodles ( I can't do like my wife coz too hot ) and go for hot tea later ;-D
Yeah, if so many people do it there has to be a method that works, it's just not something I've ever been able to do. I also don't slurp my tea, though, even when i'm alone :D Maybe the slurping itself helps?
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Bok
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Tue Mar 09, 2021 6:44 pm

@belewfripp of course it does! That is the whole point of slurping! Behind every seemingly silly habit is a rational reason (although some have become obsolete over time).

Same by the way, as you see Turkish gentlemen slurp their burning hot chai ;)
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wave_code
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Wed Mar 10, 2021 4:38 am

its not like one has to slurp super loud either, especially when the cup is a good shape. just taking in a bit of air cools the tea, helps coat the mouth, also highlights more aromatic aspects of the tea for me.

I find if I'm not doing big cup lazy brewing I'll still use a pitcher, these days mostly a shibo without a lid since it helps hold back any leaf bits that make it out of the pot - mainly just because going from the pot to another vessel and then to a cup, even if everything is warmed, helps cool things down to a more drinkable temperature. Or I just wait a few seconds when its winter and its cool indoors. aside from trying not to burn off my tastebuds I find while still hot but not too hot I can taste significantly more and get a more accurate feel for the body of the tea. Some teas even taste significantly better to me once they've cooled down by a pretty substantial amount.
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aet
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Thu Mar 11, 2021 6:21 am

belewfripp wrote:
Tue Mar 09, 2021 12:38 pm
Maybe the slurping itself helps?
with tea I do it as I want to get more air in along with the liquid , but rather for taste purposes then actually cool it down.
With noodles didn't work for me. I just burned my lips.
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doomslayer
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Tue Mar 23, 2021 9:21 am

I am naturally safe here because I have something called cat's tongue (at least I was told it's called that way). Basically I can't drink or eat anything remotely hot, it really hurts my tongue. At least now I know how it happened evolution-wise :D

However, I do want to to add that it comes at a price. My wife is Korean and her cuisine has these awesome soup/stew dishes served in solid rock bowls, served very hot. Like, it's boiling when you get it and keeps boiling for a while in front of you. Whenever we visit her side of family, I always look like a complete jerk during dinner - food gets served, everyone starts eating, and I sit there with a sad face for the next 20-30 minutes slowly chewing some random snack and explaining that everything looks and smells great and I'll absolutely devour it in a bit, I just really can't eat hot stuff.

As for pizza, I usually eat it out of fridge without warming up. :D
Andrew S
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Thu Mar 25, 2021 6:16 am

@doomslayer: like you, I cannot enjoy very hot food or drink.

Perhaps that's driven me towards old tea, especially old pu er, which can be enjoyed in large quantities even after it has cooled down.

There seems to be some precedent for this habit of mine: http://www.marshaln.com/2008/05/friday-may-9-2008/

Andrew
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doomslayer
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Thu Mar 25, 2021 8:53 am

Andrew S wrote:
Thu Mar 25, 2021 6:16 am
doomslayer: like you, I cannot enjoy very hot food or drink.

Perhaps that's driven me towards old tea, especially old pu er, which can be enjoyed in large quantities even after it has cooled down.

There seems to be some precedent for this habit of mine: http://www.marshaln.com/2008/05/friday-may-9-2008/

Andrew
Yup, I usually wait until it cools down too - maybe not until it's cold, but definitely until it's comfortably warm. And eastern style tea drinking (gaiwan, etc) helps a lot here since they use tiny cups that cool down fast :D As opposed to western style where you brew one big cup and wait forever for it to cool down.
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klepto
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Fri Mar 26, 2021 2:38 pm

I use smaller cups and wait 30 seconds or so because I can't taste my tea when it is boiling hot. Honestly I've used two cups before, let the first steep cool and drink it at the end. This gives me more insight because sometimes I drink tea too fast to notice anything about it. :mrgreen: :oops:
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