NYT: California Wants to Serve a Warning With Fries (acrylamide)

[DeepModem Mom]

California Wants to Serve a Warning With Fries
By MELANIE WARNER
Published: September 21, 2005


Americans may have plenty of reasons to fear French fries. While they are one of the country's favorite foods, they are soaked with trans fats, loaded with sodium and full of simple carbs, the bad kind. And, it turns out, they are also full of a chemical called acrylamide, which is known to cause cancer in laboratory rats and mice.

That discovery a few years ago has raised questions about the safety of fries, as well as potato chips, which are also packed with acrylamide.

It ultimately led to a showdown this summer over whether such foods should bear health warning labels and whether companies should be required to reduce acrylamide levels in their food.

The battle pits the activist attorney general of California against the food industry and the Food and Drug Administration.

What happens over the next few months could have a huge bearing on the eating habits of Americans, and may make a dent in the bottom lines of restaurants and food companies. French fries are the No. 1 consumed food in restaurants, according to the NPD Group, a research firm....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/21/business/21chips.html?ei=5094&en=c916134e8adc7054&hp=&ex=1127361600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all

[benburch]

1. And perhaps they should!

Just as there are safer foods (those without a burden of agricultural chemicals) there are safer methods of cooking foods.

[meganmonkey]

2. Interesting - this is where the chemical comes from:

"Acrylamide is not put into food, but is formed when starchy food is heated at high temperatures."

I was hoping it was something added by fast food places so it wouldn't be in fries from other places. I love fries :(

[goforit]

7. Hmmm....If so, all starchy food heated at high temps would qualify.

[Xithras]

24. Yep, it's in breads and cookies too

Any starchy food. The hotter the cooking temperature, the more there is.

[pinniped]

3. Damm, I've been eating about four orders of French Fries a week.

I hate In and Out.

[Sparkman]

4. Maybe a solution to hi temp frying can be found. Acrylamide forms, not add

ed to the french fries and potato(e) chips. What does Dan Quayle say, I wunder.

[booksenkatz]

5. Are baked fries/potato chips ok?

I don't eat either of these often, but I enjoy them once in awhile.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

9. Or what about a plain old baked potato?

I eat those frequently. I thought they were pretty healthy (at least until I load them up with butter and sour cream, but still...) -- but it's starch cooked at a high temp.

[booksenkatz]

13. Yeah, what exactly is "high temp?" nt

[Xithras]

25. Anything that's not raw.

The higher the temp, the more acrylamide is formed. Baked foods should have less of it, but will still have some. Most baked pasta dishes will also have detectable amounts of it.

Short of living on a raw food diet, you really can't avoid it.

[AlCzervik]

6. After watching "Supersize me" last December my family and I

stopped eating fast food, not because of the obvious health risks alone but it was the interview he did with Eric Schlosser the author of Fast food nation, he explained a lot of what they put into the food and corporate farming and that was it for me, no more fast food and no more junk food.

[SnowGoose]

8. Then they'll have to label bread

Because it's in there too.

[jilln]

10. Then they may as well start labeling meat...

It would be interesting to see which kills more every year, meat or cigarettes.

[NorthernSpy]

11. oh gawd, just let people eat in peace!

Could we please have done with all these half-baked food scares? I don't believe for a minute that anyone's going to die of french fries.

Why can't we pull resources out of these pointless "public health" nagging campaigns and use the savings to help make it possible for uninsured people to visit the doctor and dentist regularly? That would do far more to promote good health than this blossoming obsession with the Fried Potato Menace ever will.

[On the Road]

14. One of the Problems with Pointless Food Scares

is that when a real threat comes along, everyone assumes the health and media sources are just crying wolf again. That's the danger of hyping every laboratory study done with gigantic doses that would never happen in real life.

Acrylamides have been studied for years in industrial settings. They are known carcinogens. The amounts in common cooked starchy foods are substantial.

I don't care about 90% of the so-called cancer risks in food today. Acrylamides, however, scare me. I have cut back on fries and similar foods as a result.

[NorthernSpy]

15. isn't drinking water treated with acrylamide?

Nope, this latest fright just isn't doing it for me.

I'm a Chicken Little of some distinction, but I still just can't get too scared of the looming threat of potato chips. I rarely eat them, because I don't like them much. But if I did like them I'd eat them as often as possible, acrylamide or no. Unlike those unfortunate laboratory animals, our species has for millenia been eating starchy foods that have been cooked at high temperatures. Mightn't that tend to harden us genetically against this particular threat?

[On the Road]

17. People Have Been Eating This Stuff for Years

but people have smoked for centuries, used lead paint, drunk water from lead pipes, wore asbestos gloves, and done many other things that are now recognized as serious health risks.

If the amount of acrylamides many Americans are ingesting had been the result of working conditions in a factory, there would be major hell to pay and most DUers would be coming down hard on the evil coporations that allowed this to happen.

I agree that dosage is the key, and I don't have the numbers handy. But when this issue came up a year or two ago, the amounts in fries and chip was substantial.

[Gormy Cuss]

20. EPA guideline on acrylamides

from an article posted at www.sfgate.com:

The Environmental Protection Agency limits the amount of permissible acrylamides in an 8-ounce glass of water to 0.12 micrograms. But in a study released this week by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Washington, D.C., advocacy group found levels that were hundreds of times higher in popular snack foods. They ranged from 7 micrograms in an ounce of Cheerios cereal to 25 micrograms in an ounce of Pringles potato chips to 72 micrograms in a large serving of McDonald's french fries.

Article also mentions that the Swedish study that first reported rates did not determine a level at which acrylamides cause cancer. The amounts in fries are hefty however.

[On the Road]

23. Thanks for the Link

I hadn't seen that article. So a McD's large fries has almost 600 times the allowable amount of acrylamides in an 8oz glass of water. Wow.

A lot of EPA standards take into account practicality. Sometimes they're set much lower than they really need to be as long as it isn't too difficult to meet the standard. So it might not be quite as dangerous as it appears. But depending on diet, millions of people are getting hundreds of times the acceptable limit.

The worst part is there doesn't seem to be any practical way to avoid acrylamides without avoiding cooked carbohydrates altogether. It's really a quandary.

[kostya]

18. Not necessarily, since cancers would probably develop

well past child rearing age, so the pressure on the genetics would not be strong. The genes have already been passed on, perhaps to 2 or 3 generations. - K

[NorthernSpy]

19. "well past child-rearing age"

Not necessarily, since cancers would probably develop well past child rearing age, so the pressure on the genetics would not be strong.

But that doesn't even contradict what I said. Perhaps all the ancestors who were really susceptible to cancer from food-borne acrylamide died off before reproducing. And what we have left IS a genetically-hardened population who are unlikely to suffer ill effects from eating french fries until late in life -- if then.

[Danmel]

12. Here we go again

Guess those lunches of Nathan's Hot Dogs and French Fries as a kid will be my undoing!


Cancer

Everything
Everything gives you cancer
Everything
Everything gives you cancer
There's no cure, there's no answer
Everything gives you cancer

Don't touch that dial
Don't try to smile
Just take this pill
It's in your file

Don't work hard
Don't play hard
Don't plan for the graveyard
Remember -

Everything
Everything gives you cancer
Everything
Everything gives you cancer
There's no cure, there's no answer
Everything gives you cancer

Don't work by night
Don't play by day
You'll feel all right
But you will pay

No caffeine
No protein
No booze or
Nicotine
Remember -

[SuperWonk]

16. This is such a crock...

First of all, there have been NO conclusive studies to support any of this... they are still in the testing phases.

Second - havn't people been eating tons of french fries since the days of the Adam and Eve... and no one has been getting cancer because of it...

Moderation in everything is key, people.

Give me a break!!

[Akoto]

21. Indeed.

Once she got tired of the apples, Eve was all about the french fries. :evilgrin:

[redqueen]

22. It's also in coffee, fruit juice, cookies...

Geez...