Formation, Analysis, Occurrence and Mitigation of Acrylamide Content in Foods

Abstract

Acrylamide (AA) belongs to the food processing contaminants group, forming in foods containing reducing saccharides (e.g. glucose and fructose) and amino acids, mainly asparagine. From these precursors, AA is formed during thermal procedures such as baking and frying of potatoes, cereals, coffee and cocoa beans at temperatures above 120 °C. AA is formed in the early stage of the Maillard reaction from decarboxylated Schiff base, decarboxylated Amadori product, or 3-amino-propionamide, respectively. Due to its metabolic transformation into glycidamide, which can react with DNA nucleobases, AA is listed in Group 2A by The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as probably carcinogenic to humans. Because of these facts, in 2018 the European Union (EU) set out so called ‘benchmark levels’ i.e. indicators used for verification of the effectiveness of the mitigation measures in broad food categories. In addition, the EU also set out performance criteria for evaluation of analytical methods such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and gas chromatography (GC) to be used for the determination of AA content in foods. Mitigation measures can be applied at any stage of food production and lies in the elimination of precursors during the growing of raw materials, splitting precursors during technological pre-treatments, or stimulation of AA polymerisation reactivity by the addition of some inorganic salts that are frequently added to foods (e.g. NaCl, K4[Fe(CN)6], or KIO3) to form biologically unharmful polyacrylamide during heating processes.