AIBU to wonder why people serve drinks too hot to drink?

[Multiplenames11]

Just seen someone with horrible burns from a drink on Instagram. This has got me thinking along with seeing a baby at a baby group get a small burn from a hot drink and someone leaving a very hot drink in a non safe place near my small child recently. Why do people not just add some cold water to hot drinks. What is the point of making a drink that's too hot to drink? Why not add a bit of cold water (after it has brewed/steeped etc), rather that handing people drinks that need to cool for sometime to be drinkable. It would hopefully prevent quite a lot of injuries.
Of course leave a tea to stew safely on a kitchen bench or put in a thermos for later if going out.

You don’t have ham 4+ times a day as you do hot drinks

I work in a care home and if the tea isn't hotter than the surface of the sun, we have some very unhappy residents indeed!

I like hot drinks to be really hot, I like to take my time drinking and not down in one go like you might drink a glass of water for thirst quenching purposes. In particular a milky drink like hot chocolate or latte hits too heavy and makes me feel sick if drunk too quickly and I don’t like when tepid so if it starts out really hot I can enjoy over time.

Yes, I’ve heard this, I know it’s how some baristas are told / trained to do it so I don’t get cross with them per se. But, I’ve never found a bad / burned / less good taste to result from the milk being heated more - it’s definitely preferable for me anyway.

As a scientist if you expose cells to near boiling water you denature/damage the cells and the protein. There is nothing normal about being able to drink scalding drinks. I think many of these people leave drinks longer than they realise, or I guess are the ones that take tiny sips and slurp to cool it or maybe they have a ton of saliva!

Most people I see or have been around just leave their drink for ages, so it is literally too hot to drink. I want to get on and have my drink and really prefer not to be given a scalding drink, which often happens.

I would guess if you made tea in a teapot and coffee in a cafetière then they’d have cooled slightly before they reached the cup

This is why I don't really drink hot drinks unless I make them especially at work. I can't drink boiling drinks they burn my mouth, so I end up putting the drink down to cool but then get caught up in doing something and by the time I remember the drink it's cold and I don't want to drink cold tea. I need it to be an immediately consumable temperature. DH can pretty much drink boiling water though

Parents should be supervising their own children, and making sure any hot drinks are not in their reach.

It’s not up to the rest of us. 🤷‍♀️

I don’t have hot drinks 4+ times a day either 🤷🏻‍♀️. Why assume everyone is the same?
Regardless, here is a non exhaustive list of other things that are linked to cancer:

Red meat
Being overweight/obese
Lack of exercise
Alcohol
Sun exposure
Processed meat
Some hormonal contraceptives
Air pollution

Yes, I often leave the last 1/4 of my drink as it’s too cold by that point.

I did smile at this post. I’m guessing it’s your first baby OP?
For the avoidance of doubt, no I don’t think anyone being scalded is funny, yes, I do think people should be mindful of where they put their hot drinks, and yes, I think the onus is on parents of babies to be extremely vigilant about safety risks, rather than it being the responsibility of the whole world to have their hot drinks colder than they’d like them in the interests of safety.

You aren’t going to get anywhere with people by invoking the ‘but it raises cancer risk too’ argument. One single glass of wine a day, being overweight and leading a sedentary lifestyle raises the risk of all sorts of cancers 🤷🏼‍♀️

4+ a day?

Also I think, given that you were attending a baby group, the key part of your post that jumped out at me was this:

Yuck. I hate the taste of boiling water. I only drink coffee but it can’t be too hot otherwise it has no flavour.
I think half of it is just some trend for “extra hot” for people that buy ready made coffee. Which is also stupid. I like coffee made my,not from some stranger on minimum wage who’s been on a 3 day training course.

Some of my friends like their drinks scalding. They always think their coffees aren’t hot enough when we go out. They don’t like my boiling water tap as their teas are not radioactively hot. These things don’t bother me.

Different incidents. The baby group was some time ago and I was right next to my baby. The left drink was recent and in my sitting room. A guest in my house had made it for themselves and had left it, because it was to hot for them to drink. It was so hot, when I passed it to them so they could put somewhere more suitable they couldn't even hold the cup for a couple of seconds (I had not realised it was that hot until that moment).

Yeah I think that’s still the responsibility of the baby’s carer to either keep eyes-on all the time or to make it clear to the guest where the tea should safely be set down.
I remember how hard it was when I had DS1, to adjust my whole way of looking at the world in favour of scanning for threats - it’s so stressful. And I remember also feeling very strongly like everyone else should play their part and lighten the load. In my experience that feeling does tend to pass with time and with more children when everything is chaos and you realise how little is really within your control 🤪. Wishing you well, OP.

Cups and mugs have handles for hot drinks. Hot drinks cool down. Supervising adults supervise their children.You're losing this one op.

I can taste cold water in a hot drink.

It is horrible.

I stay away from children so that isn't an issue.

Considering how many hot drinks are consumed, there are not many incidents of burns

Wow that's patronising response.

The baby I saw burnt at a baby group was not my baby nor was it my drink. It just stuck in my mind as the mum naturally very very upset and not her first baby! She had been sitting right next to her baby too and the drink was in a cup with a lid and she hadn't seen it. This group always served drinks very hot and people left them sitting around for ages.

That’s why mugs have handles. Because the contents are too hot to hold them to be held without a handle.

Yes you’re right, what’s better than having to drink your drink in precisely 30 seconds before it’s so cold it’s undrinkable? I like nothing better than having a rapidly downed cup of coffee/tea. Relaxing.

In all seriousness - MacDonalds coffee for example is ridiculously hot. But I understand why, if someone orders a takeaway coffee they want to be able to drink it when they take it away.
I haven’t seen any serious incidences of burns in children from these types of takeaway drinks, but I’m sure they happen and are of course awful.
However - isn’t this part of parenting? Mitigating the inevitable risks of the environment around us?
Someone I went to school with had a permanent scar from pulling a cup of tea onto themselves as a baby. So it was always in my mind as an environmental risk when having kids. I don’t think the difference between 100deg and 97 (undrinkable for me unless downed immediately) would make a huge difference to a baby’s skin? Maybe I’m wrong but I’d be avoiding both for kids?

But why leave a drink that hot near a young child. They could just as easily have left in in the kitchen or somewhere else safe or at least have it in sight. At least the scalding drink drinkers are supervising their drink by drinking it! I just don't get leaving them around for ages because it is too hot to drink.

Ok I must be extremely weird for not expecting a drink left close to a child to be so so hot! Can you just slightly see why I was surprised it was so hot?....

Because different people have different tastes and preferences and you can always wait for a hot to drink to cool but no matter how long you wait it never gets warm again.

Your issue is leaving hot drinks near children. That’s a different issue.