Taiwanese doctors called for the public to remain calm while responding to reporters’ questions on a ruling by a Los Angeles judge that Starbucks Corp and other coffee sellers must now put cancer warnings on coffee sold in California.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle on Wednesday said that Starbucks and other companies had failed to show there was no significant risk from a carcinogen produced in the coffee roasting process, court documents showed.
The culprit is a chemical produced in the bean roasting process that is a known carcinogen and has been at the heart of an eight-year legal struggle between a tiny nonprofit group and big coffee companies.
The Council for Education and Research on Toxics wanted the coffee industry to disclose the danger with warning labels.
The coffee industry, led by Starbucks Corp, said the level of the chemical in coffee is not harmful and any risks are outweighed by the benefits.
Starbucks and the other defendants have until April 10 to file an objection.
Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital toxicologist Yan Tsung-hai (顏宗海) on Friday said that although the International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified acrylamide as a class 2A substance — probably carcinogenic to humans — there is not sufficient evidence that the substance increases the risk of cancer in humans.
The public should remain calm and not panic, he said.
Acrylamide is present not only in coffee beans, but also in french fries, hash browns, chips and cigarettes, Yan said.
An acceptable daily intake of acrylamide is 2.6mg per kilogram of body weight, Yan said, adding that an adult weighing 60kg should ingest less than 156mg per day.
However, as acrylamide is a byproduct of cooking, it is difficult to measure the amount a person ingests per day, Yan said.
Acrylamide is the product of a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars in food, which is called the Maillard reaction, and only occurs when the food is heated at more than 120°C, Yan said.
Even if coffee contains acrylamide, research has proven that coffee consumption helps lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer, he said.
As one 150ml cup of drip coffee contains 110mg of caffeine, a 60kg adult male should not drink more than three cups a day, while a 50kg female should not drink more than two, Yan said.
Consuming too much coffee can cause heart palpitations, increased blood pressure and an increased heart rate, Yan said.
Taiwan’s Food and Drug Administration Food Safety Division Director Lee Wan-chen (李婉媜) said the California ruling is the only one of its kind in the world.
She said eating less deep-fried or baked foods, sticking to a balanced diet and exercising regularly, is the key to good health.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching