A link between tea, coffee and throat cancer?

Have you ever considered that there may be a link between drinking hot tea or coffee and cancer? I hadn’t!

Like most people, I enjoy both a cup of tea or coffee and probably drink too much of the latter.

What has always amazed me is just how hot some people can drink coffee but in particular tea! I personally can’t and have thought for a long time that it can’t be the best of things to subject your throat too!

By the same token, you wouldn’t put your hand in water that was almost scolding hot would you?

What the Times says about hot tea and coffee

Recently, there have been various articles in the press with headlines linking the drinking of overly hot beverages with cancer. It seems that drinking tea and coffee are not the problem when it comes to cancer but the temperature you drink them at is!

The Times reported the results of a study carried out in Iran which found that ‘drinking tea at 70ºC or more increased the risk of cancer eight-fold compared to drinking warm or lukewarm tea (65ºC or less). Drinking it at 65-69ºC doubled the risk’. This all refers to oesophageal cancer

As the job of newspapers is to sell copy, the article probably isn’t as objective as it could be so I researched a little further and found that similar research had been carried out in Western Countries including the UK and US.

The National Health Service doesn’t dismiss the hot tea and coffee risk

The National Health Service in the UK puts the research into perspective and gives slightly different advice in terms of reducing the risk of oesophageal cancer. One is entirely obvious and the other not. It does not however dismiss the potential link between hot tea and cancer.

Read more about hot tea and its potential link to cancer on the British National Health Service site. It’s worth a read just to be informed and as usual, there’s always something to be learnt

Chris Nizzi

You might enjoy this article called A nice cup of tea, an English pre-occupation. An article about the the English and their tea drinking habits!