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Cover Story
03 A discovery of coffee’s secret to health on the 26th ASIC
Besides the studies mentioned before, the 26th International Conference on
Coffee Science held by The Association for Scicnce and information on coffee(ASIC)
happened in Kunming China on Nov.13th 2016. This seminar is regarded as the
most influential and authoritative meeting, which means Olympic Games in coffee
academia. During this seminar, experts of different fields from 60 countries shared
their studies on coffee, the organizer also invited 7 famous experts of coffee and
health to give their speeches and opinions on this aspect. We select 3 topics re-
lated to our daily life. Let’s see how our experts argue for coffee.
The relation of coffee & cancer: Is the evaluation of IARC in 2016 correct?
International Agency for Research on Cancer (ab. IARC) listed caffeic acid
from coffee as carcinogen type 2B (limited to bladder cancer) in 1991, which
meant “possibly cause cancer to human body”. However, a report in Jun 15th
this year stated that: there’s no sufficient evidence to support the argument
“coffee possibly causes cancer” after the investigation on 1000 research samples.
Coughlin,J. stated that IRAC still raises that coffee may possibly cause bladder
cancer though they don’t find any effective cancer-causing factor from coffee; but
Coughlin,J. they point out that drinking very hot coffee will cause esophagus cancer, for this
they classify coffee as carcinogen grade 3. However, there’s no conclusion wheth-
(US) er ambient coffee or ice coffee will cause cancer. So Coughlin,J. doubts statements
that classify coffee as carcinogen grade 3. At the same time, Coughlin,J. finds that
there were no significant bladder cancer disease before 1970, but coffee was pro-
moted early before 1970. So he thinks no sufficient evidence to support coffee as
one of the factor causing bladder cancer.
After investigating previous research reports which proved coffee could
lower down the incidence of bladder cancer & prostatic cancer and the reports
which proved the negative correlation between coffee and some cancer, Coughlin,J.
thinks IRAC should add grade 5: a category which can lower the risk of cancer; and
coffee should be classified into the grade 5, instead of existing grade 3.
IARC classifies cancer causing factors into 4 grades: grade 1 is Carcinogenic to humans, ex. metha-
nol; grade 2 is furthered classified as grade 2A & grade 2B, A is probably carcinogenic to humans, eg. UV
radiation; B is possibly carcinogenic to humans, ex. engine exhaust; grade 3 is substances couldn’t be
identified as causing cancer or not, ex. methylbenzene; grade 4 is substances not causing cancer.
the relation between coffee consumption & diabetes II
Scientific evidence proves that taking proper coffee can lower the risk of dia-
betes effectively. Comparing to the group drinking less than 2 cups of coffee per
day or not drinking coffee, the diabetes disease rate of the group drinking 3-4 cups
coffee per day is lowered 25%. According to the investigation of European Food
Safety Bureau on caffeine safety, amount of proper coffee consumption will be 3-5
cups per day; within this range, whenever taking 1 more cup of coffee, the diabetes
disease rate will decrease by 5%-10%.
In the World Coffee Science Meeting this year, Professor Tuomilehto,J. from
Tuomilehto,J. Finland gave a similar conclusion. His research indicates that chlorogenic acid,
(Finland) main ingredients in coffee, has strong inhibitory action to α-glycuronide, and even
after saccharic loading, it can prevent the increasing of blood sugar evidently, thus,
will lower the risk of diabetes. In addition, research states that adiponectin con-
centration will increase when caffeine concentration in human body increases; the
level of adiponectin can indicate the development of diabetes, and it also exhibits
the potential of diabetes resistance in clinical test.
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