The news that Starbucks coffee is found to contain a high concentration of carcinogenic chemical-acrylamide is widely circulated, and acrylamide is carcinogenic, so we can only say that we should drink less.

acrylamide is a white crystal chemical with potential neurotoxicity, genotoxicity and carcinogenicity. Foods rich in carbohydrates are prone to produce acrylamide when cooked at high temperature (above 12℃).

In fact, the coffee bean itself does not contain acrylamide, and it is not added by Starbucks, but naturally occurs in the baking process, and all coffee will contain this substance.

Coffee beans are rich in starch, which will produce a certain amount of acrylamide (equivalent to fried chicken legs) after roasting and grinding. However, in order to improve the flavor of instant coffee, high-temperature (14℃~18℃) extraction is often used in the process of making instant coffee, which makes the acrylamide content increase several times.

In addition, we often come into contact with acrylamide through cigarette smoke and food in our daily life. The sources of acrylamide in food mainly include baked food, fried food, puffed food, etc., including instant coffee, boxed potato chips, French fries, bread, fried dough sticks, steamed slices, baked sweet potatoes, baked fruits and vegetables, baked nuts, etc., covering almost most kinds of snacks in life.

The concentration of acrylamide in coffee is very low

The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer now classifies acrylamide as a class 2 carcinogen (2A), and the current research only stays in the stage of animal experiments (a large number of animal experiments show that acrylamide has certain carcinogenicity; And it can cause nervous system damage, affect the early development of infants, and endanger male reproductive health). There is no sufficient evidence to show that it is equally harmful to humans. Therefore, normal people do not need to worry too much, except for some special occupational groups that may cause nerve damage due to high-dose contact and intake.

Gao Yun, a nutritionist at tongji hospital Nutrition Department, said that long-term and excessive consumption of foods containing acrylamide may indeed induce cancer, but there is no need to be too alarmed about daily coffee drinking. "Acrylamide is a by-product of roasted coffee beans, but the coffee content in a cup of instant coffee, whether hand-brewed or bagged, is only about 2-3 grams, and the data show that every kilogram of instant coffee contains about .36 mg of acrylamide, which is almost half of that of potato fried food. At the same time, some studies have shown that some ingredients in coffee may even reduce the risk probability of some cancers, so it is really biased to completely deny the fact that coffee contains acrylamide.

Gao Yun pointed out that in daily life, for the sake of health, people should pay more attention to reasonable eating habits. "In fact, in daily life, the acrylamide intake of some starch foods processed at high temperature, such as barbecue, potato chips and French fries, is much higher than that of coffee. It is suggested that people should avoid eating fried foods as much as possible, and family cooking should also focus on steaming and cooking."