Acrylamide News

Please, bear with me.

And don't get me wrong: I have no more knowledge than the rest of you regarding whether acrylamide in potato products is a true carcinogen. By "true carcinogen", I mean that, when eaten in reasonable quantities, it carries significantly higher risk of cancer than, say, traveling on a commercial airliner. Most of us do the latter without thinking much about cancer risk. And most of us are exposed to low level cancer risks all the time. To carry risk, it needs to be higher than this background "noise" of low risk.

I have drawn no conclusions as to whether acrylamide is cancer-causing. I just have observations and questions. Reference my blog entries from October 21 (http://potatoprocessing.key.net/2008/10/more-on-acrylamides.html) and August 4 (http://potatoprocessing.key.net/2008/08/acrylamide-unkowns.html) of last year.

I write this in view of a couple of recent articles: Canada is moving toward labeling acrylamide as a carcinogen: http://www.potatopro.com/Lists/News/DispForm.aspx?ID=2335&Source=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Epotatopro%2Ecom%2FNews%2Easpx; A new study from Poland that demonstrates that excessive chip/crisp consumption carries some measurably negative health effects: http://www.potatopro.com/Lists/News/DispForm.aspx?ID=2324&Source=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Epotatopro%2Ecom%2FNews%2Easpx%3FPaged%3DTRUE%26p%5FDate%3D20090219%252005%253a00%253a00%26p%5FRating%3D3%26p%5FID%3D2343%26View%3D%257b82D67804%252d78DD%252d499D%252dA872%252d014A50505992%257d%26PageFirstRow%3D26; and a Reuters report on the lack of a statistical link between acrylamide and breast cancer: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,500692,00.html

(Thanks to Paul at http://www.potatopro.com/default.aspx for his excellent news site. If you don't spend time on Paul's site regularly, you should)

So, again, help me out.

We have a study from a number of years ago from Sweden, that says mice can contract tumors when exposed to acrylamide in concentrations far above what would be expected in normal humans eating potato products normally. Or even excessively. We have another study from about a year ago, from the Netherlands, that demonstrates no link between acrylamide consumption and risk of gastro-intestinal cancer. And now a study that shows no link with breast cancer.

We have this recent study from Poland that says that eating potato chips (with acrylamide) excessively will increase the amount of acrylamide in the blood. This must be from their rocket science department! Also apparently from the same department comes the finding that eating far too many chips/crisps (with attendant fat and salt) is not good for the circulation. Hmmmm. Seems they have made a brilliant discovery of the obvious. Interesting to observe that the Polish study does not appear to validate any link between acrylamide and cancer.

And so we now have Canada marching to the same piper as California: Treat acrylamide in potato products as conclusively cancer-causing (like tobacco). Regulate it! Label it! Advertise against it! Pay no attention to the levels of acrylamide in that bran muffin- bran muffins are healthy! "Potato", however, is a word that should regularly be linked with "couch", and so is bad.

And so our culture expresses its prejudice and tendency to over-regulate.

I have not yet seen a study that actually statistically links the consumption of potato products by actual humans in relatively normal amounts with measurably increased risk of cancer. Until we see such a study, we should exercise some rational balance between potential (read: unknown) risk and known cost.

OK, I'll step down from the soapbox now.

Tim

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