Impact of the consumer cooking practices on acrylamide formation during the preparation of French fries in Spanish households

ABSTRACT

An observational study in 208 volunteers in households from 30 Spanish provinces was conducted from May to June 2017 in order to evaluate the formation of acrylamide during the preparation of French fries from fresh potatoes. Consumer cooking practices and household typology were evaluated with an ad-hoc questionnaire. Potatoes (fresh and fried) and frying oil were collected from the households. A total of 36.1% of samples contained acrylamide above the benchmark level for French fries (500 µg kg⁻¹). The mean acrylamide content (550 µg kg⁻¹) and P95 (1747 µg kg⁻¹) were higher than values reported by EFSA (308 µg kg⁻¹ and 971 µg kg⁻¹, respectively). Although the colour ‘golden’ was the criteria to decide the end-point of frying, nearly 40% of the consumers misclassified it. Acrylamide was significantly correlated with the colour parameter a*, even in this random scenario of frying practices, and is able to distinguish above and below the established benchmark level of 500 µg kg⁻¹ for acrylamide.

KEYWORDS:

• Acrylamide
• French fries
• process contaminants
• food preparation
• consumer
• households

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Ms. I. Alvarez, Ms. B. Díaz and Mr. M.A. Martinez for their technical assistance, and Dr. J. Martinez-Monzó and Dra. P. García for the validation of the questionnaire.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Additional information

Funding

This research is funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Spain) under project SAFEFRYING (AGL2015-46234-R).