Alert Issued on Fried-Food Chemical (WHO/Acrylamide)

WHO Cites Risk in Acrylamide, Linked to Cancer in Rats
Reuters
Saturday, March 5, 2005; Page A10

GENEVA, March 4 -- The World Health Organization said Friday that people should eat less food containing acrylamide, a chemical associated with fried foods that has caused cancer in laboratory rats.

WHO called on governments to urge the food industry to "lower significantly" the acrylamide content in foods such as french fries, potato chips, coffee and grain-based products including bread.

Studies by Swedish scientists in 2002 first drew attention to potential risks posed by acrylamide, which can form at high temperatures during frying, roasting or baking. At the time, the U.N. health agency called for more research after other studies suggested people did not eat enough of the chemical in their daily diet to pose a significant risk. <snip>

"Consumption of foods with this contaminant at current levels of occurrence may be a public health concern," it said in a statement posted on its Web site. "This conclusion was based on a conservative evaluation, according to the committee, which noted that there is still considerable uncertainty about the mechanism of the toxicity of acrylamide." <snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8342-2005Mar4.html

:D

Nothing but blue-green algae, seaweed, alfalfa sprouts, and tofu for me from now on.

No wonder whales live so long.

I'll always miss the southern breakfast of champions, an RC Cola and a Moon Pie, but I'll cope...

that nearly-raw stuff.

Phooey.

...exactly how does this form in the various foods cited, I wonder. And, why now and not over the past hundreds or even thousands of years during which time frying, baking and roasting has been a standard way to cook? Could it be due to the preservatives that modern processing adds to foods to prolong shelf life and control molds and so forth?

I wouldn't be surprised if we've been eating small amounts of it since we first developed agriculture and started cooking plant products. It's not clear to me if the levels in foods are enough to cause a substantial increased risk of cancer - after all, much of the food we eat (including many raw vegetables/fruits) has small amounts of natural chemicals that can alter DNA, but our bodies have developed sophisticated mechanisms to detoxify and remove these chemicals or repair the DNA damage they can cause. Nonetheless, cutting down on fried foods can't hurt...

As an aside, polymerized acryilamide is used ubiquitiously in molecular biology for running protein and DNA sequencing gels, and it acts as neurotoxin if inhaled. Fun fun...


-SM

:-) Me, on the other hand...(I've worked with liquid acrylamide for years...) Acrylamide is sold as a powder or as a liquid solution (in water I think) for use in biology labs. Most people don't use the powder because of the risk of inhalation. The liquid is fine as long as you avoid skin contact or ingestion, and polymerized acrylamide is relatively harmless, although we try to avoid skin contact or ingestion.

Back in the day, though, artists would sculpt from polyacrylamide and became ill from inhaling the dust.

-SM

Edit: Wikipedia on acrylamide

...sounds:

<snip>

Acrylamide
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The chemical compound acrylamide is an amide with chemical formula C3H5NO and structure


It is a white odorless crystalline, soluble in water, ethanol and ether. It is used in papermaking, ore processing, manufacture of permanent-press fabrics, and the manufacture of dyes. Acrylamide is also used to synthesize polyacrylamides which find many uses as water-soluble stabilizers, for instance in waste water treatment and in gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE).

Acrylamide is also a probable carcinogen found in small quantities in some foods. It is believed to be created in foods when starches and other carbohydrates are overheated (far past 100°C) during cooking. Some sources claim that people in the modern world consume daily on average around 25 micrograms of acrylamide, and that this accounts for a significant number of cases of cancer.

The CAS registry number for acrylamide is 79-06-1 and its UN number is 2074. :wtf:

Jesus H Christ! Another known carcinogen and everyone is being expsosed to toxic does of this stuff

It's unclear whether the amount we eat substantially increases our cancer risk or not. It certainly might, but like I said, lots of "natural" foods (i.e. vegetables) have plenty of naturally-occuring chemicals that are toxic in high enough doses, but are tolerated in the small amounts that we eat (for instance lots of plants produce natural pesticides that would be toxic/mutagenic to us in large doses...)

Actually, eating anything whatsoever has the potential to cause cancer since metabolism creates free-radicals which can damage DNA. But most are absorbed by the cell before they can do damage DNA, and for those that do manage to damage DNA, most of that gets repaired by a whole battery of DNA repair enzymes. Cells are designed to absorb a certain amount of DNA damage, including that from our diet/metabolism, otherwise we'd never survive infancy.

Undoubtedly people are doing more research now to get a better understanding of whether the levels of acrylamide in food are enough to raise mutation rates. Personally, I'd cut back on fries and chips and not worry too much about the rest... :-)

-SM