Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
Unless of course you want to create a large number of non-thinking zombies who cower while whimpering that the only hope is the State rescuing them from certain destruction. Could it be that simple?
Warning everything in life will kill you, eventually.
And just in case you don’t know @Susan Quinn, I heartily agree with your sentiments about both coffee and California.
You might have left California too early as those leaving now are getting the benefit of the real estate bubble. My son’s closest friend and neighbor sold and moved to Atlanta last year. They bought a big house on a golf course for cash with their equity from the smaller house in Orange County. Timing, of course, is always a problem with bubbles. My son and his wife are talking about where they will retire. It is NOT in California.
We are quite happy in Tucson but go back to see family. We were there last weekend and I have become a country mouse. The traffic was worse than I can remember. Glad to get back to Tucson where a traffic jam is ten cars at a stoplight. The city is just big enough to have a good opera, which is my most serious criterion.
Good man, you are, Okie! It angers me that life can be challenging enough, and the state has to add to it with their idiocy. Sigh.
We did very well when we left, CA, on selling our house, Mike. That bubble burst immediately after we left. Tucson sounds lovely; we thought about AZ, but we had relatives here in FL.
To paraphrase Bogart, “There are certain beverages I’d advise you not to label as dangerous.”
Oh Brian, I’m so sorry–you live in CA, don’t you? Watch out for the coffee–it’ll kill ya.
This would be the most California sign ever.
Actually, whatever doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger. (I’ve got a million clichés at my fingertips). On my second cup this morning. Yeah, baby, yeah!
You should know that coffee has an unusual effect with me. When I worked at UCLA, there was a coffee house a few paces away from the office where I worked. At around 3pm when I would get the after-lunch doldrums, I would walk to the coffee house and order a Cappuccino Royale. In short order, I became quite animated and entertaining and apparently a bit disruptive, to the point that my colleagues would try to prevent me from venturing forth to said coffee house at the appointed hour. Go figure. Some people just don’t know how to enjoy life.
If you drop the murders in 5 of our major cities, the US has the longest life span in the world. We’re doing ok. For Pete’s sake…
I visited the USS Iowa museum in Los Angeles several years ago. Right outside the window where you pay for a ticket is a sign indicating that the battleship has substances in it that may cause cancer. You know, as if people are going to try to put the battleship’s hull in their mouth and eat it.
It’s another planet, California.
But they want to change behaviors. They always want to change behaviors.
I am one of those rare people who lost money buying a house in California. We moved there in 90, left in 97 during a recession. That said, all the money in the world would not have made it worth my while to stay in that loony bin while raising my kids.
Didn’t California try to get phones labelled as potentially cancer causing, because there were rumors that cell phones caused brain cancer or something like that?
…from my cold
deadcancerous hands.There’s a headline on Drudge that said California is thinking (or may have) of passing a $1000 fine to any waiter that offers a plastic straw – is it fake news, cause that one really hurt my head?? If not, then yes, it’s time for them to secede – they’ll be Venezuela in no time….
Oh, you crack me up, @joep!
Absolutely! Holding that sucker up to your ear would mangle your brain! I had some very concerned, uh, friends.
Saying the risk is really low actually only fuels the problem because it implies there is a risk. The reality is that there is no risk. I doubt any significant study can show an increased risk of cancer from whatever trace amounts of acrylamide can be found in coffee. If people can’t possibly learn to under stand the concept of dose dependence then they will forever have to live in fear of everything. Because most things can kill you in sufficient quantity.
Now @valiuth, you’re going to mess up their whole campaign with facts! ;-)
Soon, soon…
How do these witch doctors get a way with stuff??? And no one is able to stop them scaring people who don’t know any better. If they ever have a legitimate warning, we will assume it is the boy crying wolf . . .
Alternative OP Title: “Keep your filthy hands off my acidic drink!” (hat tip, The Pink Panther)
It’ll be joining a growing wave tackling this crisis.
Because food vendors will want to keep costs down, and cannot always control the minutia of distribution, this means that yet again California is driving product labeling for the entire United States. If this goes through, then all coffee in the US, no matter where it is sold, will have these stupid warning labels.
I think I shared an article from Analog magazine back in the days of Ricochet 1.0 where in their fact section they discussed the impossibility of background cell phone radiation causing tumors. The reason was that cell phone energy was much, much too low to cause such a mutation. But it seems California has put a restraining order on logic and facts — they have to stay at least 5000 feet away from California at all times.
That’s what I was thinking! Florida and everyone else will fall right in line…
It’s like an epidemic. Like the black plague.