As known a wide range of cooked foods contain the suspected carcinogen acrylamide
at levels between a few ppb and in excess of 1000 ppb. These include potato
derivatives, bakery products and roasted coffee. As the toxicological data suggest that
acrylamide might be carcinogenic for humans, efforts have been carried out to identify
possible routes to reduce acrylamide levels in foods and thus consumer exposure.
These are relevant to mitigation interventions, aimed to keep low as much as possible
acrylamide formation during the heating process. It is worth to note that often the
mitigation strategies present limiting factors for their applicability (e.g. impact on food
sensory and nutritional properties, regulatory compliance and costs), depending on the
type of product and industrial setting.
By virtue of its low molecular weight one can plausibly think that acrylamide can be
removed from foods by exploiting its physical chemical properties. We investigated the
possibility to reduce acrylamide levels in foods by means of its physical removal from
the finished product.
To this purpose potato derivatives and bakery products were subjected to treatments
adopting different combinations of temperature, time and pressure. Formulation
variables were also considered.
Results showed that acrylamide can be efficiently removed from the food matrix.
