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."

Comments

So important they couldn't wait to make mistakes?

[Wonko42]

They thought this was so important that they haven't bothered getting their facts checked or having their research reviewed? Sounds like they actually thought it was more important to alarm the public than to follow procedure and make sure their research is correct before announcing their findings. That's what publishing is for.

This sounds very fishy.

The sad thing is

[david duncan scott]

...the story made me hungry. Guess I'm doomed :)

Soylent Chips

[Servo5678]

high-carbohydrate foods creates acrylamide (which is a suspected human carcinogen)

Did anyone else read that and have a Soylent Green flashback?

Not NEARLY enough study.

[blair1q]

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

Your life...

[jcenters]

...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.

Re:Right on.

[JabberWokky]

Actually the "eat truckloads of meat" diet (well, the real version, which encourages vegetables, and only discourages carbohydrates) has had studies done on it since the 1970s, and, while it may or may not be the healthiest thing (neither is being overweight), it does work, and when done right, is safe (the one oft quoted study contradicting that involved a study group of five people). It just suddenly got popular recently and a bunch of opportunists wrote what appear to be badly written books, and doctors freaked because normally ketosis is a symptom of very bad health problems - that your body is using its own tissues for energy. The idea for dietary, balanced ketosis (where the body substitutes internal stores for carbohydrates) is still a new one to the majority of the medical profession.

--
Evan

Re:Acrylamide - main use : water treatment.

[beme]

Hold up there, cowboy. Reading that epa page a bit further down, it clearly states that the Maximum Contaminant Level goal (MCL) is set at zero. 'Course, that's an 'unenforcable' limit. The enforcable limit is mentioned here:
"The regulation for acrylamide became effective in 1992. EPA requires your water supplier to show that when acrylamide is added to water, the amount of uncoagulated acrylamide is less than 0.5 ppb."

Here's the stink about why it gets into your drinking water in the first place:
"The main source of concern for acrylamide in drinking water is from its use as a clarifier during water treatment. When added to water, it coagulates and traps suspended solids for easier removal. However, some acrylamide does not coagulate and remains in the water as a contaminant. Improvements in the production and use of acrylamide have made it possible to control this contamination to acceptable levels. "

And the health effects:
"Short-term: EPA has found acrylamide to potentially cause the following health effects when people are exposed to it at levels above the MCL for relatively short periods of time: damage to the nervous system, weakness and incoordination in the legs.

Long-term: Acrylamide has the potential to cause the following effects from a lifetime exposure at levels above the MCL: damage to the nervous system, paralysis; cancer."

Nice stuff. If you're getting a lot of it, you should be concerned.

Bunch o' crap

[Paradise Pete]

This is absurd. Cooked carbohydrates are consumed in massive quantities. If it were as dangerous as this people would be dropping like flies.

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?

Re:So important they couldn't wait to make mistake

[!splut]

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.