Dietary Acrylamide: A Detailed Review on Formation, Detection, Mitigation, and Its Health Impacts

Abstract

In today’s fast-paced world, people increasingly rely on a variety of processed foods due to their busy lifestyles. The enhanced flavors, vibrant colors, and ease of accessibility at reasonable prices have made ready-to-eat foods the easiest and simplest choice to satiate hunger, especially those that undergo thermal processing. However, these foods often contain an unsaturated amide called ‘Acrylamide’, known by its chemical name 2-propenamide, which is a contaminant formed when a carbohydrate- or protein-rich food product is thermally processed at more than 120 °C through methods like frying, baking, or roasting. Consuming foods with elevated levels of acrylamide can induce harmful toxicity such as neurotoxicity, hepatoxicity, cardiovascular toxicity, reproductive toxicity, and prenatal and postnatal toxicity. This review delves into the major pathways and factors influencing acrylamide formation in food, discusses its adverse effects on human health, and explores recent techniques for the detection and mitigation of acrylamide in food. This review could be of interest to a wide audience in the food industry that manufactures processed foods. A multi-faceted strategy is necessary to identify and resolve the factors responsible for the browning of food, ensure safety standards, and preserve essential food quality traits.

Editorial: Dietary acrylamide in human health

“…In animal experiments, the toxicity is induced due to saturation of the detoxification mechanisms as well as not all the damages are repaired since the reparative capacity is exceeded. As suggested in some previous research, vitamins and bioactive substances in food might also play a protective role in humans ( 10 ).…”

Association of Maternal Dietary Habits and Infant MTHFR Gene Polymorphisms with Ventricular Septal Defect in Offspring: A Case–Control Study

“…This evidence supports our finding that additional consumption of grilled and fried foods during early pregnancy, which increases the intake of exogenous dietary AGEs, could be harmful to human embryos. Apart from AGEs, undesirable byproducts of thermal processing include acrylamide and heterocyclic aromatic amines, which are putative sources of cardiovascular toxicity, reproductive toxicity, teratogen, carcinogenicity, and neurotoxicity [47,48]. In contrast to the harmful effects of unhealthy foods, we identified the probable protective dietary factors of VSD, including fish and shrimp (OR = 0.42), fresh eggs (OR = 0.58), soy products (OR = 0.69), and dairy products (OR = 0.71), consistent with our previous publication [13].…”

Dietary Exposure to Acrylamide Has Negative Effects on the Gastrointestinal Tract: A Review

“…The development of analytical methods, e.g., high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), gas chromatography (GC) with mass spectrometry (MS) detection, or in the selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode, or tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) in the multiple reaction mode (MRM) with isotope-labelled standards, enabled accurate determination of ACR content in individual food products, which made it possible to monitor the ACR level in ready products by food manufacturers [27,28]. According to the Joint Expert Committee for Food Additives (a UN Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health Organization advisory body), the main ACR sources in the diet contributing to the total ACR intake are chips (16-30%), potato crisps (6-46%), roasted coffee (13-39%), cakes, and cookies (10-20%), as well as various kinds of bread (10-30%) [28,29].…”

“…Relative to their body mass, their estimated daily intake of ACR is three times higher than that of adults [28,33]. The research conducted during the past 20 years has shown that consumption of ACR-containing products leads to disorders in human and animal organisms [6][7][8][9][10][11]21,22,27,33]. This effect is strictly dependent on the ACR dose, time of exposure to ACR, and the species of animals used in the experiment.…”