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Fried Carbohydrates Form Carcinogens
An Anonymous Coward writes "Reuters (via Yahoo) is reporting that a Swedish team has found that cooking certain high-carbohydrate foods creates acrylamide (which is a suspected human carcinogen). The scientists felt this was so important that they have foregone publishing in favor of taking this public immediately. Potato chip stocks are taking nosedives in Scandanavia."
hello from your arteries.
This sounds very fishy.
"As with any health warning, this report is preliminary and should not yet be a major cause for concern."
but thank goodness for rampant journalism fanning flames they kindled themselves to give us something exciting to read about.
If you're right, hopefully we'll see some news from the 'other' side in the next few days.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
You beat me to the punch. There's a reason respectable scientists publish things in peer-reviewed journals. Just another scare tactic. Anyone want to place bets as to whether these people have ties with the "eat truckloads of meat" diet thing that was so popular last year? Bah.
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
...the story made me hungry. Guess I'm doomed :)
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Did anyone else read that and have a Soylent Green flashback?
This may come as a shock, but until I inhale more carcinogens daily just driving to work. Not to undermine the work thes fellows have done, but until second-hand smoke and exhaust fumes are dealt with in a signifigantly better fashion, this is a small drop in a very large bucket.
Tim
Yep. And proud of it too. Not going to stop me at all from going out and eating potato chips. And bread? your going to advise the recall of bread? im sorry, but humanity has been eating bread for what, thousands of years?
No, i cant see bread going off the shelfs anytime soon.
This
still a lot better than starving. there must not be much to do in Scandinavia these days.
bc
There's no way the rest of the food you eat with this stuff is irrelevant to its carcinogenic potential.
These scientists are being irresponsible in releasing this information prematurely without copious disclaimers.
Apparently, fame (or profit) is more important than truth.
--Blair
Acrylamide
;-)
Acrylamide is an organic solid of white, odorless, flake-like crystals. The greatest use of acrylamide is as a coagulant aid in drinking water treatment. Other uses of include: to improve production from oil wells; in making organic chemicals and dyes; in the sizing of paper and textiles; in ore processing; in the construction of dam foundations and tunnels.
So, simply put : don't panic, you are getting it anyway.
...is ending a little every second, so stop worrying about every stinking thing you eat.
You have only a limited amount of time on planet earth, anyway. If you like eating potato chips, eat potato chips! If you like to smoke, fire one up! If you like to post inane comments on slashdot, type away! I'd rather enjoy life for thirty years as opposed to living perfectly clean, eating nothing but raw vegetables, and living to be 150.
And make an impact! If you're pissed about something your government does, raise hell about it! Write a book! Start a political movement! Paint a picture! LIVE!!!!
I'll be damned if I'm going to waste hours of my life worrying about things that are going to kill me, because there are things a lot more immediately dangerous than POTATO CHIPS.
vi ~/.emacs
If you think fried or baked carbohydrates are a danger check out the bad news about dihydrogen oxide!
"But smoking, which is known to cause cancer, remained a bigger risk, she said."
At least that cigarette I had after lunch is still more dangerous to my health than my BigMac was.
Although, it would be awesome if I could say that my smoking of a cigatette was healthier than the next non-smoker who gives shit about smoking, as he/she is wolfing down that BigMac.
Carbohydrates are already rapidly gaining a bad reputation.
If you've read any of the low carb diet books (eg, Protein Power, Dr Atkins Diet) they can tell you all kinds of tales of hyperinsulinemia and many related ills coming from a high carb diet. Type II, adult onset diabetes is just the beginning.
Things like how archeologists can tell from excavated human bones if a society has made the transition from hunter/gatherer to agricultural based food sources by the fact that earlier bones are stronger (albeit fewer of them).
Also, that the early Egyptians, one of the first cultures to rely heavily upon bread, had many of the same problems of modern society with obesity, cardiovascular disease, tooth decay, etc.
How the problems of fat (particularly saturated fat) in the diet are exacerbated by a high carb diet and lessened in a low carb diet.
Not to mention that many traditional hunter/gatherer ethnic groups (such as Native Americans) are being decimated by diabetes. Where 150 years ago they ate buffalo meat, nuts and berries, now they eat a complete 7-11 based diet of spam, potato chips and soft drinks.
I tried the low carb diet ( about 50 grams/ day) for a while. It was quite effective in reducing body fat, but it was much harder to adhere to, much more than a traditional low fat diet, which allows you to find comfort in sugars and starches.
While I'm no longer on the stringent low carb diet, I still try to avoid the most egregious, high glycemic index carbs like sugar and starches, such as those in potatoes.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
And BTW, why does the headline read "Fried Carbohydrates," when the article itself doesn't single out frying, but rather says that any cooking method does this?
Indeed. I am eagerly waiting for Frito Lay to tell me 'the whole truth.' If tobacco companies have always maintained their scientific integrity when discounting the alleged dangers of tobacco, why wouldn't fried food manufacturers do the same?
As I recall it's actually old news that heating a wide variety of organic substances can damage them and create dangerous compounds. You'll see echoes of this all over the place...warnings about grilling meats, charring food etc. Many of the carcinogens in cigarette smoke are in fact formed by the slow burning process. They should have published first though. Bad call just tossing this to the media.
According to the article, this phenomenon not limited to fried food. *All* heated high-carb /aliments/ --- eg, the staple foods of pretty much every industrialised society --- are now ostensibly Bad Food. So don't eat that sandwich; shun that rice: Death lives in every bite!
Me? I'm just glad that I only eat deep-fried pork giblets. Mmm. Healthy *and* refreshing! Beefcake! BEEFCAKE!
- undoware.ca
I think this is going to be one of those things you see in the history books. Their experiments seem to be trivially reproduceable. Simply taking certain foods and measuring how much toxin is in them. Not a hard thing to screw up. Count on this being real.
I always food was run through tests, and one could be reasonably secure in knowing that they weren't consuming well known toxins. I mean come on. Put stuff in a blender and run it through a gas chromeograph. Viola.
How long has the FDA been around? And if they aren't testing food for stuff like this, then what the fuck have they been doing for the past century?
"Frying at high temperatures or for a long time should be avoided," Busk said, adding: "Our advice to eat less fat-rich products such as french fries and crisps, remains valid."
Since there are so many variables and so many unknowns, the best diet is a diverse diet. That's about the best anyone can try for. Everything in moderation. Nearly every chemical known to man is carcinogenic in sufficient concentration.
So you learn that there is 500 times more of some suspected cacrinogen in (a loaf of?) bread than you allow in water. Humans have been eating bread for 10,000 years. In those years average life expectancy has tripled. And they conclude bread is dangerous?
Wouldn't this tell a thinking person that you can increase that safe limit on the chemical in water by 500x?
And the very fact that they didn't try to publish it tells me there is something wrong with their measurements. There must be at least one graduate student watching that dream of a PhD disappearing into the ether as she curses her advisor....
I'm sorry, but I forgive them for going public with this prior to publication. The issue isn't going to cause a panic, since we already knew that fried foods are bad for you. The researchers and the institution aren't going to become rich off of the short-lived publicity. They just felt a moral obligation to release this data to the public as soon as possible, which is fine.
They didn't decide to *skip* the peer-review publication process. Their findings will still be submitted to a journal, and funding for further research by their lab and their institution will be contingent on the merit of that report.
Countless food related epidemiological studies of questionable validity, or performed by groups with biasing connections to industry, are published in journals and reported by the media every year - and half of them conflict with the other half. Remember the butter-margerine debate? Cholesterol in eggs? You can't count on peer review to weed out all the bad epidemiological correlations - you can only do that looking for corroborating experimental evidence.
The angel in the oatmeal.
So food contains high levels of acrylamide. It's very nice that the authors are so worried about the general publics safety. But ususal procedures are there for a reason: to make sure no stupid mistakes occur.
I find this story really hard to believe, especially that how the acrylamide is produced is never stated in a chemical way. Then there is the fact that acrylamide has the tendensy to produce polymers quite easily and if the values found in food are so high. I'm quite surprised that no acrylic polymers are found (which are a lot less harmfull).
Cancer is only one side of the story. Everything cause cancer (at least everything that tastes good) IMO the more scary part is that "It is also known to cause damage to the central and peripheral nervous system."
Living in Israel I've suspected long ago that people have gone mad. Now I know why.
A funny detail is that this was found out. The study of acrylamid actually started with the drilling of a tunnel in western Sweden. The rockwalls had to be sealed with a product (Rocka Gil) that contained acrylamide and the workers got sick. In the folloing study they found that it wansn't only the tunnelworkers that had the substance in their bodies, and it has now been traced to our food.
I submitted this story two days above (when it was news) but was rejected.
So long and thanks for all the fish'n'chips.
fast food stock shares they shorted just before announcing this??? 8-)
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
.. Don't believe any unpublished scientific findings.
;)
Maybe I'll cut down on the Doritos anyway..
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
You don't know anything about scentific publishing. The journal publishers aren't necessarily interested in publishing something that is so controversial. The publishing game is mostly a personality club now; if you are liked by the editors and publishers, you get published.
As for fried foods containing carcinogens, I thought this had been known for some times. Besides, potato chips contain hydrogenated oils, which are artificial fats your body cannot break down. They're quite harmful to health, but you hardly hear about them because they are in everything.
In short, why don't you actually read something before touting your ill-informed and counterproductive opinion.
I suppose it's news that cooking will generate acrylamide, but really, cooking of any carbohydrate will create carcinogens, in the form of aromatic carbon compounds. For example, a well-cooked burger and a slightly-burnt piece of toast both contain anthracene, which is a carcinogen.
But it isn't anything new that people are eating carcinogens. Peanuts are (relatively) high in carcinogens, beer even more so. Eating "organic" foods doesn't help, because plants have developed chemical ways to deal with pests, and generate these toxic chemicals in even greater amounts when grown without pesticides.
One problem with reports like these is that they treat something that is "carcinogenic" as being a "kiss of death". Carcinogens are merely capable of causing cancerous mutations, given the right conditions. But then the question is, what kind of cancer? What types of tumors? The danger with smoking isn't just that it is so carcinogenic, but that the cancers that it causes are really nasty ones. Compare this with skin cancer, which also has a high rate of occurance, but is at the same time very treatable.
Trying to make an emergency out of this is ridiculous, and goes against all reason. It would be a lot more logical to perhaps try to determine the particulars of how (and if) the small amounts of acrylamide in food are treated by the body. The current bans on acrylamide in drinking water are reasonable, if there is nothing known about it, then don't allow it to be added. But the fact is that acrylamide has apparently been present in the human diet for a very long time, so why suddenly make a big fuss about it?
It seems to me that this is just a way to turn some rather boring research "we found chemical X in cooked food" into a hot-button issue. Maybe they'll get some more funding out of it. And with Sweden's tax rates, they'll probably be able to get a lot, too.
I wish I had mod points, so I could mod this as funny.
Isn't oatmeal supposed to help prevent cancer? Now I find out that it possibly causes it....Is my breakfast food in a delicate balance of life and death?
Unless you like to fry your bread, there's no reason given to stop eating it.
Sometimes I wonder at the motives for some of these announcements. Remember alar? Turned out not to be such a bad thing. There's carcinogens in heated carbohydrates now, eating meat is bad, eating fat is bad, beer is bad, power lines cause cancer, driving my car is singlehandedly responsible for global warming, the list goes on. It doesn't matter to some of these people if any of this is true or not. The people who make these kind of announcements are usually either misguided, mistaken, or have some sort of agenda.
Sometimes I suspect those with the agenda won't be happy until they scare us into living in a non-technological society eating only nuts and berries. That's all well and good for them, but I personally like living in a heated apartment when it's 20 below zero (Centigrade) eating 5cm thick steaks while sucking down a couple beers and reading slashdot.
Nothing they say scares me and it shouldn't scare any other rational being. Unfortunately, most people aren't rational, so these fear-mongers get ratings and ratings means big bucks, which just encourages others to do the same. Those of us with more than a couple brain cells have the responsibility to educate those who don't know any better.
People have been eating this way for a long time; the difference between publishing now and in three months is trivial. But if they are wrong, or incomplete, it does sow confusion and makes it harder to educate people in the future.
People will wait until there is a lot of confirming evidence before changing their dietary habits. Even in obvious cases, where people are specifically told by their doctors to change, they often do not.
So I find it irresponsible to go straight to newspapers with this finding, even if it is correct. If people cannot distinguish between good science and bad science, it makes it hard for them to know what they should believe and what they should reject.
Sure, sometimes good science makes wrong conclusions, and poor science often makes the right ones by cutting corners. But it's certainly the way to bet; when that ceases to be true science will have to seek out a whole new mode of operation.
NT
But wasn't published yet. Problem is, the journal of course want to be first, so now it's not a given it will be published, which is not a good thing for the scientist.
It was rather the "National Food Administration" who wanted to go public early. (And they really seems to have funding problems.)
In this case one also has to keep in mind that acrylamide has killed a number of livestock, rendered wells unusable and harmed workers during a tunnel construction in Sweden, so anything about it is automatically bigger news in Sweden.