The darker and crispier a food is, the more likely it is to be carcinogenic
Core Tip: How can you stay away from acrylamide and reduce your exposure to this carcinogen?
Many people love crispy toasted mantou pieces, guoba (scorched rice), baked buns, and more. But few know that scorched starchy foods also carry a cancer risk. A recent authoritative survey has sounded the alarm for people: the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) found that the level of the carcinogen acrylamide in some foods, such as Nescafé coffee and Heinz baby biscuits, is on the rise, posing a cancer risk.
Starchy foods can also produce carcinogens
For many years, people believed that meats cooked at high temperatures easily produce carcinogens heterocyclic amines and benzopyrene, while starchy foods cooked at high temperatures would not produce harmful substances. It wasn't until a decade ago that Swedish scientists discovered that starchy foods heated at high temperatures produce acrylamide, and the amount is not insignificant. People found that acrylamide does not exist in food before processing; it is only produced after heating. Acrylamide is most easily produced between 130°C and 180°C, and the amount increases rapidly above 160°C, which is exactly the starting temperature for daily stir-frying and deep-frying.
Which foods are high in acrylamide
So, which foods have the highest acrylamide content?
Generally speaking, for the same type of starchy food, the darker the color and the stronger the aroma after heating, the higher the yield of acrylamide.
Different starchy foods may also generate different amounts of acrylamide. Domestic and international tests have shown that the foods most likely to exceed acrylamide limits are various fried potato products, such as potato chips and french fries, as well as fried wheat products like youtiao (fried dough sticks) and youbing (fried pancakes), and baked goods like biscuits and cookies. Additionally, some starchy foods can also produce acrylamide during daily cooking. For example, making fried or pan-fried mantou slices, turning rice into guoba, or baking sesame seeds until they are fragrant and crispy will all increase the acrylamide content.
Avoid fried foods and eat fewer biscuits
So, how can you stay away from acrylamide and reduce your exposure to this carcinogen? Here are 9 safety principles:
1. For staple foods, try to use steaming or boiling methods, and avoid frying, grilling, or baking.
2. Eat less deep-fried food, such as youtiao, youbing, mahua (fried dough twists), paicha (fried dough twists), zhaogao (fried rice cakes), matuan (fried glutinous rice balls), as well as fried vegetable balls, meat-flavored starch balls, and battered fried fish and shrimp, as they all contain starch.
3. Eat less roasted, fried, and puffed potato products, such as potato chips, shredded fried potatoes, and fried sweet potato chips.
4. If you do fry, grill, or bake, try to cut the food into larger pieces or thicker slices, not too thin.
5. When toasting mantou or bread slices, don't let them get too yellow.
6. For snacks made from flour, such as biscuits, the darker the color, the less you should eat.
7. Eat less dark-colored, crispy, and puffed snacks, even if they are not fried.
8. Don't give babies various biscuits too early. Be cautious with breakfast cereal crisps, and even more so, avoid potato chips and any fried foods. When buying baked goods for babies, try to choose lighter-colored products.
9. When heating starchy foods in the microwave, lower the power setting and shorten the cooking time as much as possible.
Of course, after learning that high-temperature heated starchy foods may also pose a cancer risk, there is no need to panic. This simply gives us more reason to坚持 not eating fried foods, eating fewer sweets and biscuits, and not excessively pursuing texture. Only by sticking to these dietary principles can we protect our bodies from harm.