Abstract
The biscuit industry has evolved in the last decades with the inclusion of alternative cereals, pseudo-cereals and other ingredients in traditional recipes, which allows current consumers' needs to be met. The dough composition, thermal treatment applied during baking, low moisture, and high rate of consumption make biscuits important contributors to daily exposure to acrylamide in Western diets. Acrylamide was determined by LC-ESI-MS/MS in 80 commercial biscuits marketed in Spain. The mean acrylamide content was 343 μg kg-1 (from <20 to 2144 μg kg-1). Rye, teff and oat-based biscuits exhibited the highest content (2144, 1559 and 1424 μg kg-1, respectively). 70% of the samples were below the benchmark level established by the EU Regulation 2017/2158. Compared to our previous prospective study in 2007 on the Spanish market, acrylamide has experienced an important decline (45%) in wheat-based formulations, demonstrating the effectiveness of the mitigation strategies applied in the sector. However, when all samples were considered, a slight non-significant decrease (18%) was observed. This fact suggests that the reformulation of traditional recipes with innovative cereals and ingredients could increase the acrylamide content in biscuits despite the mitigation strategies applied. Therefore, forthcoming reviews of the regulation should consider establishing categories in biscuits according to the main cereal, as has already been established in breakfast cereals.
Highlights
Biscuits are a cereal-based foodstuff whose traditional recipe includes sugars and fats that are mixed and subsequently baked at high temperature for short times in order to reduce the water content (
One of the main chemical reactions involved in the generation of those colours and flavours is the Maillard reaction, which is essential for the production of acrylamide.[4]. Since this compound was identified by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) as a public health concern due to its relation with the development of different types of cancer,[5] important efforts have been made to monitor acrylamide levels in processed products during the past few years, making companies aware of this problem and the need of mitigation strategies to reduce acrylamide generation
There is a limitation since the information related to the type of processing and the technology applied is missing. 19 biscuits were formulated only by wheat (n = 17) and rice (n = 2), whereas most of the samples were multi-cereal biscuits, based mainly on wheat (n = 47), corn (n = 4), oat (n = 7), rice (n = 4), spelt (n = 6), and a mixture of cereals (n = 6)
Summary
Biscuits are a cereal-based foodstuff whose traditional recipe includes sugars and fats that are mixed and subsequently baked at high temperature for short times (up to 200 °C for less than 20 min) in order to reduce the water content (
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