OPINION:
A California judge’s recent coffee ruling is so strange you have to wonder if Starbucks actually bribed the plaintiffs to bring suit in the first place (“The Hysteria State,” Web, April 5). The fact is that the most prominent sources of acrylamides are in processed foods (e.g., potato chips, cookies, crackers and practically all foods containing toasted grains).
Starbucks and the other coffee vendors sell some of these processed foods, but the elephant in the closet is the basic business models of all of these coffee companies. They sell sugar (very low-cost) flavored with a small amount of premium coffee (high-cost). How many people walk into a Starbucks and order a black coffee, then proceed to drink it that way? On the other hand, those “Venti” and now the “Trenta” (Starbucks’ version of the Big Gulp) Frappuccinos practically fly out the door. I walked into Starbucks once and ordered a small black coffee, then asked them to leave room for butter, no cream or sugar. After a pause I was asked to repeat my order. Everyone ordering as I did would be Starbucks’ worst nightmare. Just look at the cost of real butter and premium coffee beans.
Most of the research examples cited in the editorial involving association with chronic disease are from epidemiological studies on humans, not mouse or rat models. As it turns out you really do not need to resort to associational studies to make a case against sugar. You can just put a carbon isotope tag on glucose or fructose, which make up sugar, and follow it around the body. It ends up as saturated fat in your liver, which becomes non-alcoholic fatty-liver disease in no time at all, a precursor for the vast majority of the chronic diseases affecting the entire U.S. population.
Starbucks is really afraid that medical terminology will eventually evolve to “Frappuccino liver disease,” and they will have to resort to just selling coffee. They are not sweating the extortion for acrylamides and are thankful that is what people are being led to worry about. Thank you, California.
SAMUEL BURKEEN
Reston
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