Abstract
Mycotoxins are commonly present in cereal grains and are not completely destroyed during their cooking and processing. When mycotoxins contaminate staple foods, the risk for exposure becomes serious. In East Asia, including Japan, rice is consumed as a staple food, and with the increasingly Westernized lifestyle, the consumption of wheat has increased. The mycotoxins commonly associated with rice and wheat are total aflatoxin (AFL) and ochratoxin A (OTA), respectively. This study examined the retention of AFL and OTA during the cooking of rice and pasta. AFL was retained at 83%–89% the initial level after the cooking of steamed rice. In pasta noodles, more than 60% of the OTA was retained. These results show that AFL and OTA are relatively stable during the cooking process, suggesting that a major reduction in the exposure to these mycotoxins cannot be expected to occur by cooking rice and pasta. The estimated exposure assessment at the high consumer level (95th percentile) and the mycotoxin contamination level determined by taking into account these reductions in the present study should be useful for the establishment of practical regulations for mycotoxins in staple foods.
Highlights
Many mycotoxins are recognized to cause a variety of subacute and chronic health problems in humans
Since rice is eaten after steaming it in Japan, we employed the same procedure using the rice contaminated with aflatoxin naturally and the rice spiked with two different concentrations of AFL
The ratio of residual AFL for spiked test was calculated based on the following Equation: The ratio of residual AFL (%) = (concentration of each or the total AFL in cooked rice spiked with AFL before steaming/concentration of each or the total AFL in cooked rice spiked with AFL after steaming × 100 (1)
Summary
Many mycotoxins are recognized to cause a variety of subacute and chronic health problems in humans. Many countries have defined levels of major mycotoxins in food, such as the maximum residue, that can be permitted for human consumption. Aflatoxin (AFL) contamination in rice and ochratoxin A (OTA) in pasta are thought to be the major problems [1,2,3,4]. The surveillance results for OTA retained in food in Japan indicated that the occurrence of OTA in pasta was high (80%), and in young children, the exposure ratio for PMTWI of OTA was relatively higher than that for other age groups [9]. To estimate the dietary exposure to AFL and OTA from staple foods, such as rice and pasta, in. In high consumers, we examined the reduction of AFL in rice and OTA in pasta after cooking
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