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Keep Your Hands Off My Coffee!
One of the smartest decisions that my husband and I ever made was leaving California more than 10 years ago. The state is once again trying to make an obscene intrusion on the lives of Californians, and they are truly insane this time. (Yes, I know they’ve gone insane before, but this one is, for this coffee drinker, over the top.)
According to a WSJ article, California is once again trying to terrify its residents with a cancer fear — for coffee. You see, coffee has acrylamide, a flavorless chemical produced during the roasting process:
Acrylamide is one of more than 900 chemicals on a list of those known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm. Businesses must warn about the presence of any of the chemicals under the law, known as Proposition 65.
They don’t mention that this chemical also appears in many baked and fried foods, such as potato chips, bread, and French fries.
A state judge in Los Angeles is supposed to rule in the next few months whether coffee will be labeled a carcinogen.
A retired oncologist in Orange County, CA, Warren Fong, had this to say:
So the only thing safe is boiled or steamed food? That’s ridiculous. You don’t scream warnings at people when the risk is really low and can’t change behaviors.
Ya think?
Published in Culture
You forgot to mention that you authored this lovely piece wearing your aluminum hat!
Because everyone reads those signs… at the gas station, at the restaurants, at Home Depot, and the dock, at the bar, at the gym, at the hotel, at the cigar shop, at the place that makes those signs…
I often dream of the time my Dad brought us to SoCal in 41 years ago. Imagine combining freedom, sanity and this weather? Happy dream… happy dream. *sigh*
Let’s just declare everything a carcinogen and get on with life . . .
No you’re a carcinogen!
Those thinking that the banning plastic straw thing is fake news, forgetaboutit!
A couple weeks ago my great state of California banned cremations. Yup, got to bury all those bodies now. Mother Gaia woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day or something.
Bodies shouldn’t be burried they need to be allowed to reenter the food cycle by left out in the forest for animals to pick at. It is the natural thing to do. #Antigonewaswrong.
Did you hear about the compost idea?
That’s interesting because it wasn’t that long ago that certain environmentalist types decried the practice of burial. Used up too much land, for one thing.
I recall a joke by George Carlin: Scientists have found a link between stomach cancer and saliva but only if taken in small doses over a long period of time.
Is it ok as long as people take the straws home and reuse them for snorting cocaine?
There’s also this photo from the happiest place on Earth.
Well, well. Leave it to the buzzkill left to put a damper on the Happiest Place on Earth. Their constant unease stems from the nagging suspicion that somewhere, somebody might be having fun, and it’s their job to put an end to it.
I’m starting to feel like I’m living in an alternative universe. Or maybe all of those folks in CA are!
I still do not understand the controversy over whether coffee needs a Prop. 65 warning. I left California in 2000 (just before it went completely nuts, and not to a better state – I went to New York). But since the very advent of the Prop. 65 warnings (late 1980’s or early 1990’s) no one paid attention to them because virtually every space had something that required such a warning. Every building had (and I presume still has) a warning sign at the entrance, though most are smaller than the one shown here at Disneyland. So, everything gets a Prop. 65 warning, everyone ignores the warnings, and life goes on as before. Why is everyone up in arms because of the possible addition of coffee to a seemingly endless list of things requiring a Prop. 65 warning?
BTW, a warning that covers so many things is less than useless – it becomes counterproductive. Since the Prop. 65 warnings are so ubiquitous that everyone ignores them, if there’s a real danger, people will ignore the warning, and are more likely to suffer harm.
For all the things to which Prop. 65 applies, this might as well be done.