Preprint
Communication

What Temperature of Coffee Exceeds the Pain Threshold? Organoleptical Methodology as Basis for Cancer Risk Assessment Including Feasibility Study

This version is not peer-reviewed.

Submitted:

25 April 2018

Posted:

26 April 2018

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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.
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Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.

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