Recent News

The United Kingdom’s Food Standard’s Agency (FSA) has spo­ken out against con­sum­ing browned foods, cit­ing that food baked, roasted, grilled or fried at high tem­per­a­tures pos­sess an over­abun­dance of the chem­i­cal com­pound acry­lamide.

While no cur­rent sci­en­tific evi­dence cur­rently links can­cer to the over­con­sump­tion of this ​‘burnt toast chem­i­cal,’ the FSA are advis­ing the pub­lic limit to their con­sump­tion of foods pre­pared in this man­ner. As aca­d­e­mics, pub­lic edu­ca­tors, and health orga­ni­za­tions are voic­ing dis­agree­ment with the study’s assump­tions, there remains the con­sen­sus that a Mediter­ranean-style diet rich in lean meat, fish, fresh pro­duce and olive oil (which has actu­ally been proven to inhibit acry­lamide for­ma­tion) decreases can­cer risk.

The news that browned and burnt food could pose a poten­tial can­cer risk is not a new one. In 2015, the World Health Organ­i­sa­tion made an offi­cial announce­ment encour­ag­ing the pub­lic to limit their con­sump­tion of processed meat prod­ucts such as sausages and bacon, as they could increase the risk of devel­op­ing can­cer. They also stressed that high-tem­per­a­ture cook­ing of meat (such as at a bar­be­cue) could also increase the car­cino­genic prop­er­ties of foods.

Now the FSA has teamed up with Olympic Gold Medal­list Denise Lewis on the Go for Gold cam­paign after its study of inor­ganic con­t­a­m­i­nants, acry­lamide, and myco­tox­ins in the diet of the aver­age UK cit­i­zen found that, while it was not pos­si­ble to avoid con­sum­ing acry­lamide entirely, the amounts being con­sumed ​“are of pos­si­ble con­cern for an increased life­time risk of can­cer.”

Mean­while, renewed atten­tion has fallen on past research into coun­ter­act­ing the for­ma­tion of acry­lamide in foods cooked at high tem­per­a­tures.

One such study points to using olive oil as a ​“reli­able mit­i­ga­tion strat­egy” when prepar­ing fried food. The study was con­ducted almost ten years ago in 2008 by researchers at Italy’s Dipar­ti­mento di Scienza degli Ali­menti (Depart­ment of Food Sci­ence) at the Uni­ver­sity of Napoli Fed­erico II.

Researchers fried slices of pota­toes in four dif­fer­ent oils at 180 degrees for five, ten, and fif­teen min­utes test­ing each one after­ward for acry­lamide lev­els. The results revealed that the slices fried in extra vir­gin olive oil had the low­est con­cen­tra­tion of acry­lamide, thanks to the ortho-diphe­no­lic com­pounds present in the oil.

Not every­one is con­vinced of the dan­ger being pre­sented by acry­lamide, how­ever. Sir David Spiegel­hal­ter, Win­ton Pro­fes­sor of the Pub­lic Under­stand­ing of Risk at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity, has spo­ken out against the study’s con­clu­sions, as has Can­cer Research UK and Marji McCul­lough, Strate­gic Direc­tor of Nutri­tional Epi­demi­ol­ogy at the Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­ety.

In fact, many experts are point­ing out that lim­it­ing one’s con­sump­tion of starchy fried foods and fatty, processed meats and increas­ing one’s intake of fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles — some­thing the ​‘Go For Gold’ cam­paign is rec­om­mend­ing — is likely to decrease one’s can­cer risk any­way, whether you con­sume acry­lamide or not.

It’s an approach echoed by Simon Poole, a UK-based author­ity on the Mediter­ranean diet and co-author of the book The Olive Oil Diet: Nutri­tional Secrets of the Orig­i­nal Super­food. Accord­ing to Poole, ​“the advice on the pres­ence of acry­lamide in some cooked starchy foods was clearly based on rea­son­able evi­dence, how­ever, it is a pity that yet again advice from gov­ern­ment food agen­cies is neg­a­tive in tone and has been described as dis­pro­por­tion­ate.”

Inter­est­ing report yet we dont join up the dots cook­ing in #evoo shown to mit­i­gate risk @curtiscord @judyoliveoil https://t.co/8R4j3rGH8h

— Dr Simon Poole (@tasteofthemed) Jan­u­ary 23, 2017

​“The oppor­tu­nity has been missed to ​‘join up the dots’ of dietary advice while cit­ing some robust study data show­ing that meth­ods of cook­ing can mit­i­gate the risk of the for­ma­tion of such com­pounds,” Poole told Olive Oil Times.

“Cook­ing in polyphe­nol-rich olive oil has been shown to reduce lev­els of these poten­tially harm­ful chem­i­cals includ­ing related het­e­ro­cyclic amines in meat as well as the veg­eta­bles and bread in this exam­ple,” he pointed out.

“While there is no doubt other con­trib­u­tory fac­tors, the lower rates of many types of can­cer seen in pop­u­la­tions adher­ing to tra­di­tional Mediter­ranean ways of prepar­ing food may well at least in part relate to the reg­u­lar use of extra vir­gin olive oil when cook­ing veg­eta­bles and other foods.”

• Food Stan­dards Agency


• BBC