Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Good News For Coffee Drinkers: It Doesn't Warrant Cancer Warning In California, Officials Say. Better News: It Reduces Risk Of Some Cancers
California officially gave its blessing to coffee Monday, declaring the beverage does not pose a "significant" cancer risk. The rule, proposed a year ago by regulators, means coffee won't have to carry ominous warnings that the beverage may be bad for you. The state took the rare move after a Los Angeles judge found Starbucks Corp. and other companies failed to show that benefits from drinking coffee outweighed risks from a byproduct of the roasting process. (6/3)
The safety of coffee has been in dispute in California since a state court judge ruled last spring that coffee must carry a cancer warning because of the presence of acrylamide, a potentially carcinogenic chemical created during the roasting process. A branch of the World Health Organization came out with a conflicting decision in June 2018, finding inadequate evidence that drinking coffee causes cancer, based on a review of more than 1,000 studies. (Randazzo, 6/3)
