Recent insights in acrylamide as carcinogen in foodstuffs

Abstract

Acrylamide is a heat-induced contaminant naturally formed during home cooking and industrial processing of many foods consumed daily around the world. French fries, potato crisps, bread, cookies, and coffee exert the highest contribution to dietary exposure of acrylamide to humans. Furthermore, food safety international bodies and industrial sectors are very active for implementing strategies to minimize its formation during roasting, baking, frying, toasting, etc. Given the prevalence of acrylamide in the human diet and its toxicological effects, it is a general public health concern to determine the risk of dietary intake of acrylamide. However, associations between dietary acrylamide exposure and increase risk of different cancers are somewhat controversial and do not have a direct extrapolation to the global population. Accordingly, further long-term studies with a general view are ongoing to clarify the risk scenario and to improve the methodology to detect small increases in cancer incidence. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.