Legal limit for reducing sugars in prefabricates targeting 50 μg/kg acrylamide in French fries

Abstract

A legal limit for the reducing sugars in the prefabricates for French fries is a simple and efficient measure to reduce the exposure to acrylamide from the predominant source for many consumers. The acrylamide content of French fries of comparable crispiness is approximately proportional to the concentration of the reducing sugars glucose and fructose in the potato sticks. On average, optimally prepared French fries from prefabricates with a (moderately low) sugar content of 0.3 g/kg contained 32 μg/kg acrylamide. With 0.15 g/kg reducing sugar even severe overfrying at 170 °C only resulted in 90 μg/kg acrylamide, i.e. a low sugar content keeps acrylamide low even under inappropriate frying conditions. In the prefabricates, the sugar content is about 10% lower than in the raw potato (resulting from the effects of blanching and prefrying). It is similar to that in the finished French fries, which enables one to distinguish whether a high acrylamide content in French fries results from high sugars in the raw material or unsuitable frying conditions. An average concentration of 50 μg/kg acrylamide in French fries could be targeted by limiting the reducing sugars in the prefabricates to 0.7 g/kg and the frying temperature to 170 °C. Even considerable overfrying in terms of duration can be tolerated then.