Hot Food & Drink

[rojash]

Today I spilled some hot, sticky food on my finger and it was agony, so I instinctively put the finger in my mouth and sucked the food off. This got me thinking: you can be drinking a cup of coffee, spill it in your lap and it's so hot that it scalds you. I'd always thought the mouth was a pretty sensitive part of the body, yet it seems much more resistant to burning and scalding. How come?

[Clanad]

Coffee, as an example, burns mouths as well as when spilled on ones arm, but the mouth has several protective mechanisms that your arm does not.

"When you drink hot coffee, you do it very slowly, cooling it down before it can burn your mouth", says James Nachbar, MD, FACS, Plastic Surgeon, Phoenix, Arizona. "The mucosa [a membrane lining] in the mouth has a very rapid blood supply," he says "and blood flowing through the blood vessels in the lining of the mouth carries away some of the heat."

Saliva also cools the hot coffee.

Furthermore the lips and tongue are so sensitive they force you to take in coffee only as fast as the mouth can cool it, says Dr. Nachbar. Arms, being less sensitive, can suffer a burn before you realize the danger. Finally, clothes hold the hot spill against your skin, which increases the risk of a serious burn.
(With thanks to Wonder Quest)...

[stevie21]

If you tilt your head back, open your mouth and pour a full cup of hot coffee into your mouth, you may just get a slight burn due to all of the reasons explained above.
Don't try it at home!

[Sequin]

I had a blister on the roof of my mouth on Sunday after biting into a roast potato that had just come out of the oven