Fried foods and potential cancer risk

I read an article talks about a lawsuit here in California raised against companies like Wendy’s, Frito-Lay, KFC, and McDonalds, to force them to put a warning label on baked and fried foods that may contain a chemical called Acrylamide, suspected of causing cancer.

Other search results on my part show that it does indeed cause cancer in labratory rodents, and is a known neurotoxin in humans. So even if it doesn’t cause cancer, we’d be ingesting a neurotoxin. Even weirder: according to wikipedia, acrylamide is used for making glue, paper, cosmetics, construction of dams and tunnels, permanent-press fabrics, and dyes … Mmm, yummy, biggie size that for me, would ya?

Here are some other articles about the checmical:
http://www.acrylamide-food.org/
http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/chem/acrylamide_faqs/en/index.html

Funny enough, the LA Times article has a rebuttal talking about how putting warning labels on french fries should then warrant putting a warning on potatoes too (since cooking a potato in any way can produce acrylamide): “No one buys a potato to eat it raw” … Actually, I quite like the taste and crunch of raw potato, washed and peeled and rinsed and sprinkled with a little salt & pepper. Apparently cooking some of these foods over 120C can produce acrylamide, but then goes on to say to ensure you thoroughly cook the food, so which is it? Cook the food, or don’t cook the food?

Wikipedia says “acrylamide may still be a carcinogen if exposed to it in larger doses” and the LA Times article says that french fries contain up to 125 times the amount that would otherwise require a warning label. Potato chips contain up to 75 times the level warranting a warning label.

And of course there are agencies and people saying that all of this is just causing a panic in the general public, but they’ve been doing research since 2002 when a Swedish group first found acrylamide in food and so far they haven’t found *proof* that it causes cancer in humans, but lean on the argument that what causes cancer in other animals *could* cause cancer in humans as well.

Still, since Elizabeth is determined to break some of my bad habits, I figure giving up on certain fried foods for her sanity as well as this whole acrylamide thing is worth considering. I don’t remember the last time I had KFC anyway, but I eat at Buger King or Wendy’s about once a week.

Oh yeah, and smoking produces Acrylamide too — so stop smoking.