Kenyans drink the hottest tea ever recorded anywhere else and risking throat cancer, warns a study at Tenwek Hospital in Bomet County.
The study shows people in Western Kenya, a region with high rates of throat or food pipe cancer, prefer their tea at temperatures exceeding 72°C, the highest recorded so far.
The study published in the June 2019 issue of Cancer Epidemiology Journal showed Kenyans to have their tea hotter than people in other regions with high incidents of throat cancer.
It compared the temperatures at which Kenyans drink their tea and found it higher than in Tanzania, Brazil, China, Germany, US, Iran and UK — areas of high throat cancers.
The study, also involving Brown University, US, National Cancer Institute, US, and The Mayo Clinic, US, found preferred temperatures for tea in Kenya was 1.5°C higher than any other studied population.
The researchers had involved 100 adult men and women accompanying patients at Tenwek Hospital.
First, the researchers had asked the study participants how they liked their tea, either “warm”, “hot”, or “very hot” with a majority, 64 per cent, saying they like it hot.
Secondly, the temperature of the tea was measured using a digital thermometer, with most participants on average taking their tea at 72.1°C.
While the study reports no association between age and preferred temperature in tea, men were likely to consume hotter beverages than women by more than two degrees.
High beverage or food temperatures have been associated with a risk of throat cancer in several parts of the world.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has defined drinking temperatures above 65°C as “very hot” and considered this exposure as probably carcinogenic.
Previously, the hottest beverage temperature reported in any geographic location was from Tanzania, with a mean of 70.6°C. But of note, the Kenyan study says 12 per cent of participants, all men, had started drinking the tea immediately, at the poured temperature of 80°C.”
The good news is that Kenyan tea was found to contain low levels of the chemicals known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) suspected to cause throat cancer.
The team had purchased 11 brands of commercial black Kenyan tea leaves and tested them for 27 PAHs.
All of the PAH levels, the study says, were found to be low in the samples, making it very unlikely that tea consumption is a significant source of PAH exposure in local populations.
Western region is well known in Kenya for its love of tea something that has resulted into a positive stereotype among the western luyha community.