Acrylamide – Still a matter of concern for fried potato food?*

Abstract

Acrylamide is a well‐known chemical compound that came into the discussion as food‐borne contaminant in 2002 when the Swedish National Food Administration (NFA) together with the University of Stockholm announced the finding of acrylamide in food for the first time. A lot of research has been done all over the world to elucidate the reaction pathway for the formation of acrylamide during processing, to find mitigation strategies to reduce acrylamide in food and to evaluate the toxicity of acrylamide to humans after consumption of acrylamide containing food. Today, it is known that acrylamide is formed under the conditions of the Maillard reaction with low moisture content and temperature >120°C by the amino acid asparagine in presence of certain α‐dicarbonyl compounds from the Maillard reaction. From this knowledge several set screws became evident for the development of successful mitigation strategies such as choice of appropriate raw material low in precursors, pre‐treatment of the raw material before frying or reducing the frying temperature. Until today no significant correlation between the consumption of acrylamide with food and the occurrence of cancer has been found. The present paper reviews the recent research on these topics with special focus on fried potato food.Practical applications: Formation of acrylamide in fried food is still of concern, and even 12 years after the first communication of acrylamide in processed food a lot of papers are published. The questions of formation, mitigation, toxicity, and exposure are partly answered but on the other side important parts are still open. The paper summarizes the status quo with focus on fried potato products.