U.S. Court Ruled that Coffee Contains a Carcinogen: In-depth Analysis of Starbucks Event

California Los Angeles Superior Court has recently ruled that over 90 enterprises including Starbucks must carry on a cancer warning label on their corresponding coffee product packages to remind consumers of a possible carcinogen in the coffee. This judgment has pushed coffee enterprises including Starbucks to the forefront and aroused extensive attention.

This event was caused by a sue of the Council for Education and Research on Toxics, a nonprofit group, against over 90 coffee selling enterprises including Starbucks and 7-Eleven, etc. for their failure to specifically point out the carcinogen—acrylamide on their product labels. However, this sue is much controversial. Let’s check.

Fig. I Structural Formula of Acrylamide

First, let’s see what a compound the carcinogen acrylamide involved in this ruling is. The structural formula of acrylamide is as shown in Fig. I which shows that acrylamide is quite simple. This compound is a white crystalline substance; it is the main raw material for production of polyacrylamide, while the latter is often used in water purification treatment, therefore, water drinking is a main route for our intake of acrylamide.

Recent studies have found that acrylamide is in fact a compound that exists extensively in food. Our food, if processed at a temperature higher than 120℃, will generally contain certain acrylamide, especially the barbecue and fried food. The Swedish National Food Agency and researchers of Stockholm University jointly reported in 2002 that they had detected acrylamide in fried and barbecue starch-based food like French fries and potato chips, with the content far higher than the maximum allowed limit in drinking water. Subsequently, researchers from Norway, UK, Switzerland, and the U.S., etc. also reported similar results.

It’s worth pointing out that the carcinogenicity of such chemical substance that extensively exists in different foods has been questionable. The present epidemiological data, and animal and human biomarker data are insufficient to prove that acrylamide is carcinogenic. And according to an expert, we should not "talk about toxicity by setting dose aside" for chemical substances like acrylamide. According to data, the content of acrylamide is about 13μg/Kg in coffee, and the carcinogenic dose of acrylamide to humans published currently is 1.6-2.6μg/Kg/day; calculated according to 50kg of a person, he/she needs to drink 10kg coffee every day to reach the carcinogenic dose of acrylamide, however, a normal person would not drink 10kg coffee every day. As a result, many experts hold that drinking coffee normally will not cause cancer, instead, coffee can prevent cancer to some extent. For example, the scholar Edward Giovannucci at Harvard University pointed out that coffee could help reduce the risk of developing cancer.

What’s worth mentioning is that the formation of acrylamide will largely increase in general baked and fried food due to water reduction and surface temperature rise in the later period of processing, but coffee is the exception: content of acrylamide will reduce in the later period of baking. Generally, the acrylamide formed in food is relatively stable, but coffee is different from general food, its acrylamide content will reduce as the storage time prolongs, namely, the toxicity of acrylamide in coffee is in fact lower than many fried and baked foods.

The so-called Starbucks Event has flooded WeChat moments and websites recently. Starbucks, the giant in global coffee sales, got "hit while lying down", and had to explained: the acrylamide event involves the entire coffee industry but not only Starbucks. The universal voice points out that the normal drinking of coffee will not cause cancer, however, enterprises including Starbucks have inevitably suffered great impacts. We can clearly see from the above analysis that the normal drinking of coffee will not cause cancer, but the drinking amount should be controlled; besides, we should control the intake of fried and baked food in daily lives, so as to minimize the harm brought by acrylamide.

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