Physical removal of acrylamide from heated foods

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.