potato chips are familiar fried snacks. The light salty taste is accompanied by the unique earthy smell of potatoes, and the crunchy taste when chewed in the mouth makes many people fondle it. From this, the couch potatoes family was born in the United States. While lying on the couch watching TV, they chewed potato chips in their mouths, which became a popular lifestyle in the 196s. In Japan, there is a special "potato chips bar", which mainly serves beer and potato chips to remind guests of the pure and carefree childhood.
However, on the morning of November 1st last year, a surprising news was suddenly broadcast on Japanese TV Morning News: potato chips contain acrylamide, which is highly carcinogenic!
The unexpected discovery that the whole world didn't expect
The news came from the research results of the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (equivalent to the Ministry of Health and Labor), which showed that a high concentration of acrylamide which was considered to be carcinogenic was detected from potato chips. The opportunity to carry out this research was announced by the Swedish government six months ago. After a long-term follow-up investigation, Sweden found that cereals containing a lot of carbohydrates, if cooked in barbecue, frying and other cooking treatments, would lead to the formation of acrylamide with carcinogenic effect.
This announcement immediately exploded all over the world, and the World Health Organization (WHO) convened an emergency expert meeting to discuss the countermeasures and agreements: Britain, France and the United States, which take fried potato food as their daily snacks, took action one after another, carried out experiments and tests, and all the results came to a positive conclusion (see the article "Health Killers that cannot be ignored" in the 12th issue of 22); Japan moved a little slower, but the test results also caused a strong shock. For a time, the whole world was filled with an atmosphere of fear, and more consumers were shaken by this favorite snack food for men, women and children.
In the five-level classification of the risk degree of carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), acrylamide is classified as the second level, which is quite carcinogenic. But it has never had anything to do with food so far. Therefore, people's surprise and impact can be imagined when this substance is suddenly detected from the most familiar food. The food minister of Japan's National Institute of Medicine and Food Hygiene made no secret of his surprise: "What a surprise. In things that people don't even think about, there are chemicals that they can't even think of, which scientific researchers all over the world have never imagined. "
genotoxicity
Among the five-level classification of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the most dangerous is level 1, which belongs to the confirmed carcinogen, followed by levels 2A and 2B, which have high carcinogenic potential, and levels 3 and 4 are basically harmless to human body. Among them, the first grade is coal tar, asbestos, chewing cigarettes, cadmium and so on; Grade 2A includes acrylamide, creosote used as wood preservative, automobile exhaust gas, benzopyrene (contained in fried fish skin), etc. Grade 2B includes chloroform, coffee, etc. Acrylamide in potato chips and the exhaust gas emitted by cars are toxic substances that are equally harmful to human body, so it can also be said that eating potato chips is equivalent to eating exhaust gas from cars.
Through experiments on mice, scientists found that mice were continuously fed acrylamide at the rate of 2 mg per kilogram of body weight, and as a result, mice developed lung cancer or breast cancer one after another. Convert this ratio to human body, assuming that the weight is 6 kg, which is equivalent to ingesting 12 mg of acrylamide every day. However, the potato chips with the most acrylamide components are found to contain about 3.5 mg in 1 kg. In other words, eating 34 kg of potato chips every day will reach this carcinogenic critical point. Most of the potato chips sold in the market are about 1 grams per bag, which means that if you eat 34 bags of potato chips every day, you will get cancer in nine cases out of ten. In fact, no one will eat like this.
so, does it mean there is no danger? Although there are still differences in judgment among researchers, there is one opinion that accounts for the majority, that is, no one dares to make a 1% assertion. They warned: firstly, it is impossible to directly compare people with animals, and secondly, acrylamide has genotoxicity that directly harms DNA, and even a small amount of substances with genotoxicity cannot rule out the possibility of cancer. Therefore, "today's children have eaten potato chips since childhood, and if they accumulate over time, the consequences are very worrying." Potato chips contain too much aluminum, and eating too much aluminum for a long time can cause dementia < P > Aluminum is not a trace element needed by human body, but a food pollutant harmful to health. If you eat puffed food with high aluminum content for a long time, it will cause neurological diseases, such as memory loss, visual and motor coordination failure, and even dementia in severe cases. In addition, excessive intake of aluminum will inhibit bone formation and cause osteomalacia. However, experts also warned that it is not a big problem for people to occasionally ingest a small amount of aluminum-containing food.
The Ministry of Health issued the No.4 announcement this year, suggesting that the public should change their eating habits based on fried and high-fat foods and reduce the possible health hazards caused by acrylamide.
The monitoring results of the Food Contamination Monitoring Network of the Ministry of Health show that the acrylamide content in starch foods processed at high temperature (such as fried potato chips and fried potato chips) is relatively high, and the average acrylamide content in potato fried foods is four times higher than that in cereal fried foods. People in China eat more fried foods, and their exposure is relatively large, which is potentially harmful if they are exposed to low doses for a long time.
Therefore, the Ministry of Health suggests that residents should avoid cooking starch food for a long time or at high temperature as much as possible in their daily lives. Advocate reasonable nutrition, balance diet, change the eating habits of fried and high-fat foods, and reduce the possible health hazards caused by acrylamide.
March 2 this year? The Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations warned the public to pay attention to acrylamide in food, and called for measures to reduce the acrylamide content in food to ensure food safety. The warning issued by the Ministry of Health yesterday was issued accordingly.
acrylamide is a chemical substance, which is the raw material for producing polyacrylamide and can be used for industrial purposes such as sewage purification. Starch food is easy to produce acrylamide when cooked at high temperature (> 12℃). The results of animal experiments show that acrylamide is a possible carcinogen. Epidemiological observation of occupational exposure population shows that long-term low-dose exposure to acrylamide causes drowsiness, mood and memory changes, hallucinations and tremors, accompanied by peripheral neuropathy (glove-like feeling, sweating and muscle weakness). Although the effect of acrylamide on human health needs further study, this problem should be paid attention to.
The human body can be exposed to acrylamide through digestive tract, respiratory tract, skin mucosa and other ways. Therefore, food is considered as the main source of acrylamide for human beings. In addition, the human body may also be exposed to acrylamide through smoking and other ways.
Expert opinion
Oncologist: "The theory of carcinogenicity" has long been conclusive.
"The academia has long been conclusive that fried food can cause cancer." Yesterday, Meng Xiangzhu of the China Cancer Research Foundation told reporters that fried foods, barbecues and other foods are far more harmful to human health than Sudan Red, which is well known recently: "Just like smoking, long-term intake of fried foods will cause a variety of tumor diseases."
Academician Sun Yan, a famous oncologist, once said in an interview that western-style fast food is one of the killers of human cancer. In fact, not only French fries, potato chips and other western foods, but also fried foods such as oil cakes and fried dough sticks that China people have eaten for many years can't get rid of the black label of "carcinogenic".
Nutrition expert: Occasional consumption is not harmful
Nutrition experts of Union Medical College Hospital told reporters that no matter how harmful acrylamide is to human body, the occasional consumption of fried foods is not very harmful to human body, but this process, like smoking may induce lung cancer, is a "toxic" long-term accumulation process, and long-term consumption will definitely pose a great threat to health. In addition, fried foods contain extremely high calories and fat, and long-term intake of such high fat will also lead to obesity or some related diseases, such as diabetes, coronary heart disease and hyperlipidemia.