Should You Avoid Coffee Because of Acrylamide? Absolutely Not.

After a years-long court battle, a California judge has ruled that coffee companies that did not want to settle financially out of court must post cancer warnings due to possible levels of acrylamide. Don’t let scare tactics keep you from enjoying one of the highest-antioxidant superfoods in the Western diet and one of life’s purest pleasures. Coffee expert Edward Giovannucci from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health spoke out against the cancer warning in a blog for the American Institute of Cancer Research, saying that there is no evidence that acrylamide causes cancer in humans.

“On a ‘cancer worry’ scale from 0 to 10, coffee should be solidly at 0 and smoking at 10; they should not have similar warning labels.”

Other scientists from the American Institute of Cancer research also point to over 1,000 studies that have determined coffee’s ability to lower risk of cancer. We at Purity Coffee have not changed our stance that a healthy coffee habit is one of the best ways to prevent cancer. And neither have multiple experts from two governmental health organizations.

• In 2016 the UN’s World Health Organization removed coffee from its list of possible carcinogens.
• In 2012 the National Institute of Health released a study demonstrating that coffee-drinkers had an overall lower risk of death.

Dr. Sanjiv Chopra, professor of medicine and former faculty dean for Continuing Medical Education at Harvard Medical School, emphasizes the health benefits of coffee in his book The Big Five (and in numerous interviews).

“There is no longer any doubt that coffee offers significant health benefits...Coffee consists of hundreds of component chemicals, among them potassium, magnesium, and vitamin E, and is rich in antioxidants, especially chlorogenic acid.”

Acrylamide is contained in a number of plant-based foods and nearly every food that is baked, roasted, or fried including most nut butters, cereals, breads, and crackers. So should you stop eating these dietary staples all together? The FDA says no.

“FDA's best advice for acrylamide and eating is that consumers adopt a healthy eating plan, consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (2015-2020).”

There is a middle path if you find this recent news disturbing but don’t want to give up on coffee. Contact representatives from your preferred brand of coffee and find out what they’re doing to reduce acrylamide levels. Do they have minimum acceptable levels? Do they test for acrylamide? If so, what are the average levels of acrylamide present in their coffee?

Purity has a standard for acrylamide whereas most (if not all) coffee companies do not.

At Purity Coffee, we intentionally roast our coffee to minimize health risks and we are perhaps the only coffee company today who has a standard for acrylamide levels. We use a smokeless roasting system to roast it just enough to reduce the acrylamide to the lowest levels we can while preventing roasting too much and risking the development of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The graph below demonstrates how our proprietary roasting protocol is designed around minimizing acrylamide, avoiding PAHs, while at the same time maximizing coffee's inherent antioxidant properties. It’s also worth noting that PAHs are in fact much more detrimental to your health than acrylamide.

We believe that a healthy life is all about balance.

Too much water isn’t good for you. That doesn’t discount the benefits of hydration benefits to your overall health. Exercise can sometimes lead to injury. That doesn’t outweigh exercises benefits to heart health, bone density, and overall resilience. If you want all the benefits of coffee and the fewest risks possible, Purity Coffee is the ideal choice. Our entire process is built around improving your health and increasing your longevity, and that begins with first reducing or eliminating any of the health risks in coffee.