Dietary exposure to acrylamide from potato crisps to the Spanish population

Abstract

Potato crisps are one of the food commodities that contribute most to overall dietary human exposure of acrylamide. This investigation has estimated the dietary exposure to acrylamide form potato crisps in the Spanish population. Sampling of potato crisps (n = 36) from 16 different producers were carried out in March 2008. An average level of 740 µg kg⁻¹ (ranging from 81 to 2622 µg kg⁻¹; minimum to maximum) and a median of 592 µg kg⁻¹ were obtained. Acrylamide levels in marketed potato crisps have been significantly reduced (nearly to 50%) compared with a previous sampling performed 4 years earlier. The observed signal value (90th percentile) was 1377 µg kg⁻¹ with 86% of the samples with acrylamide levels lower than 1000 µg kg⁻¹. Dietary exposure to acrylamide from potato crisp consumption in the total Spanish population was estimated to be 0.042 µg kg⁻¹ body weight day⁻¹ by using a deterministic approach based on the National consumption database. In a second study, dietary exposure (based on a 3-day food record) was determined to be 0.053 µg kg⁻¹ body weight day⁻¹ for the adult population (17–60 years) and 0.142 µg kg⁻¹ body weight day⁻¹ for children (7–12 years). The contribution of potato crisps to the estimated dietary acrylamide exposure of the Spanish population is moderate as compared with other European Member States.

Keywords:

• acrylamide
• dietary intake
• potato crisps
• food contaminant

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to S. Martín, S. de la Peña, D. Gomez, and M. A. Martinez-Bartolome for technical assistance. The Consejería de Educación y Ciencia (Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid) is thanked for supporting a pre-doctoral grant for G. Arribas-Lorenzo. This research was partly supported by a Scientific Research Programme of the Comunidad de Madrid (ANALISYC, S-505/AGR-0312) and a European Collective Research Project (No. CT-2005-516415) supported by the Sixth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development.