An influential panel of experts convened by the World Health Organization concluded Wednesday that regularly drinking coffee could protect against at least two types of cancer, a decision that followed decades of research pointing to the beverage’s many health benefits. The panel also said there was a lack of evidence that it might cause other types of cancer.
An influential panel of experts convened by the World Health Organization concluded Wednesday that regularly drinking coffee could protect against at least two types of cancer, a decision that followed decades of research pointing to the beverage’s many health benefits. The panel also said there was a lack of evidence that it might cause other types of cancer.
The announcement marked a rare reversal for the panel, which had previously described coffee as “possibly carcinogenic” in 1991 and linked it to bladder cancer. But since then a large body of research has portrayed coffee as a surprising elixir, finding lower rates of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, neurological disorders and several cancers in those who drink it regularly.
In their report, the scientists did identify one surprising risk for coffee and tea drinkers. They said that drinking “very hot” beverages was “probably carcinogenic,” because the practice was linked to esophageal cancer in some studies.
Much of the evidence for coffee’s health benefits stems from large epidemiological studies, which cannot prove cause and effect. But the favorable findings on coffee consumption have been so consistent across numerous studies in recent years that many health authorities have endorsed it as part of a healthy diet.
In its report, published Wednesday in Lancet Oncology, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said it had assembled a team of 23 international scientists who reviewed more than 1,000 studies. The agency said the evidence showed that drinking coffee was unlikely to cause several types of cancer, including breast, prostate and pancreatic cancers, and that it was associated with a lower risk of uterine and liver cancers.
Still, the group did not give coffee a ringing endorsement. It placed coffee in its Group 3 category for things with “inadequate” evidence of carcinogenic potential, such as fluoride, low frequency electric fields and toluene, a solvent used to make nail polish.
Geoffrey Kabat, a cancer epidemiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, said he felt that the agency did not go far enough in its report.
“What the evidence shows overall is that coffee drinking is associated with either reduced risk of several cancers or certainly no clear increase in other cancers,” he said. “There’s a strong signal that this is probably not something that we need to be worrying about.”
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