A few years ago, the World Health Organization was apparently on the verge of putting a warning out on a chemical called acrylamide. It is formed when starches are cooked at high temperatures ie potato chips, french fries. I spoke to a number of my friends about it at the time and nobody seemed to have heard much about it. Then, the news reports on this suddenly stopped.
I was wondering if anybody knows anything about this.
Is acrylamide formed when starches are fried?
Is acrylamide a dangerous chemical to ingest?
We are we not hearing about this anymore? If the WHO was involved, this must have been a big issue.
Did the food industry have anything to do with this story going away?
Yes, but they’re also formed in lots of other foods.
We’re not sure but probably not. Mega-doses of acrylamide have been shown to cause cancer in rats. But epidemiological in humans have shown no link. In the rat studies, the lowest effective dose was 2mg/kg of body weight a day. Given the highest tested food in the above link was 2mg/kg, one would have to eat their own bodyweight in food every day to show any effects.
Because people are awaiting more scientific data before making any pronoucements.
Quite possibly, it doesn’t mean they are wrong.
MEGA-Doses of most any thing may and often does result in undesirable harm.
A little table salt is desirable in the diet but MEGA-doses could be fatal.
A very unrealistic way to test products!
It disappeared because it wasn’t a real danger. I remember a sane person at the time of that panic mentioning that, in order to get the same level of increased cancer risk as the rat you would have to consume 40 kilos or so of potato chips per day.
Er, this is supposed to be the straight dope. We don’t know if it’s a danger or not yet. Shalmanese has it right: Because people are awaiting more scientific data before making any pronoucements. The Mutti study, which did not find a link between acrylamide and certain cancers in humans, is the only human study and it has serious limitations and is hardly definitive.