Coffee creamer, a habitual addition to morning coffee, has become a subject of debate over cancer risk. There is no evidence that a single cup of creamer causes cancer. The problem, specialists say, is a dietary pattern that piles up ultra-processed foods and added sugars every day.
According to medical sources on the 3rd, the U.S. lifestyle outlet Parade recently interviewed oncologists who pointed to coffee creamer as an additive best reduced in the morning. The interviews included Asma Dilawari, an oncologist who previously served as a medical officer at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is now chief medical officer at TimeCare, and Jitesh Joshi, a hematologist-oncologist at Houston Methodist Clear Lake Hospital.
Dilawari did not describe coffee creamer as a major health problem. She said, however, that she does not recommend non-dairy creamers, because they often contain artificial and unhealthy ingredients such as hydrogenated oils, added sugars and sweeteners.
Joshi said there is no strong direct evidence that creamers, food additives or artificial sweeteners cause cancer. He noted, however, that trans fats remaining in older products have been linked to a modest increase in the risk of prostate and colorectal cancer.
He also pointed out that creamer is classified as an ultra-processed food, and that consumption of ultra-processed foods has been linked to overall cancer risk, including colorectal and breast cancer. His conclusion is that the key factor is the cumulative effect of an ultra-processed, high-sugar diet rather than any single product. As an alternative, he suggested adding a small amount of milk without added sugar or an unsweetened plant-based beverage. When choosing oat or almond drinks, products with no added sugars are the standard.
Evidence on sugar-sweetened beverages is accumulating separately. A research team at the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute published in the international journal Gastro Hep Advances an analysis tracking 112,284 U.S. adults over several decades. The group that drank sugar-sweetened beverages at least once a day had a 2.45 times higher risk of developing stomach cancer than the group that drank them less than once a month. There were 278 cases of stomach cancer during the follow-up period.
The same increase in risk did not appear for beverages with artificial sweeteners. Because the study was observational, however, it cannot prove causation, and most participants were white, so further research is needed before applying the findings to other populations.
The situation in Korea is not unrelated. In the 2023 national cancer registration statistics released by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korea Central Cancer Registry, there were 288,613 new cancer patients, with thyroid cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, breast cancer and stomach cancer ranking as the most common in that order. With both colorectal and stomach cancer near the top of the list, intake of ultra-processed foods and sugar-sweetened beverages becomes a target for management. The standard Dilawari offered is simple: build a diet around whole foods that undergo few processing steps.
