Dirler, J.; Winkler, G.; Lachenmeier, D.W. What Temperature of Coffee Exceeds the Pain Threshold? Pilot Study of a Sensory Analysis Method as Basis for Cancer Risk Assessment. Foods2018, 7, 83.
Dirler, J.; Winkler, G.; Lachenmeier, D.W. What Temperature of Coffee Exceeds the Pain Threshold? Pilot Study of a Sensory Analysis Method as Basis for Cancer Risk Assessment. Foods 2018, 7, 83.
Dirler, J.; Winkler, G.; Lachenmeier, D.W. What Temperature of Coffee Exceeds the Pain Threshold? Pilot Study of a Sensory Analysis Method as Basis for Cancer Risk Assessment. Foods2018, 7, 83.
Dirler, J.; Winkler, G.; Lachenmeier, D.W. What Temperature of Coffee Exceeds the Pain Threshold? Pilot Study of a Sensory Analysis Method as Basis for Cancer Risk Assessment. Foods 2018, 7, 83.
Abstract
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) evaluates “very hot (>65 °C) beverages” as probably carcinogenic to humans. However, there is a lack of research regarding what temperatures consumers actually perceive as “very hot” or as “too hot”. A methodology for organoleptical assessment of such threshold temperatures was developed. The participants were asked to mix a very hot coffee step by step into a cooler coffee. Because of that, the coffee to be tasted was incrementally getting hotter during the test. The participants took a sip at every addition, until they perceive the beverage as too hot for consumption. The protocol was evaluated using 87 participants. Interestingly, the average pain threshold of the test group (67 °C) and the preferred drinking temperature (63 °C) iterated around the IARC threshold for carcinogenicity. The developed methodology was found as fit for the purpose and may be applied in larger studies.
Keywords
coffee; temperature; esophageal cancer; thermosensing; sensory thresholds; methodological study
Subject
Medicine and Pharmacology, Pharmacology and Toxicology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
