Acrylamide in alternative snacks to potato: A review

• Published in: Food research international Vol. 194; p. 114931
• Main Authors: Ferreira, Cristiane Lopes Pinto, da Costa, David Silva, de Faria, Rozilaine Aparecida Pelegrine Gomes, Bragotto, Adriana Pavesi Arisseto
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Canada Elsevier Ltd 01-10-2024
• Subjects: Acrylamide - analysis; Chips; Contaminant; Cooking - methods; Food; Food Contamination - analysis; Food Handling - methods; Hot Temperature; Humans; Snacks; Solanum tuberosum - chemistry; Thermal processing; Vegetables; Snacks; Vegetables; Thermal processing; Chips; Contaminant; Food
• ISSN: 0963-9969; 1873-7145; 1873-7145
• DOI: 10.1016/j.foodres.2024.114931

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•A detailed discussion of acrylamide levels in sweet potato, carrot, pumpkin, beetroot snacks, among others, is provided.•The nutritional composition of the vegetable has a strong impact on the formation of acrylamide.•Processing time and temperature may be potential factors for increasing contaminant rates in alternative vegetable chips.•The development of cultivars with reduced levels of reducing sugars and asparagine will be essential in the future.
The snack food market has been changing to keep up with the growing demand for healthier products and, as a result, alternative products to traditional potato chips have been emerging to provide health-related benefits. Extrusion, frying, and baking are the main techniques used worldwide in the processing of snacks and are among the main reasons for the formation of toxic compounds induced by heat, such as acrylamide. This contaminant is formed during thermal processing in foods heated at high temperatures and rich in carbohydrates. Processed potato-based products have been pointed out as the main contributors to acrylamide dietary exposure. Many studies have been conducted on potato chips since the discovery of this contaminant in foods and research on the formation of acrylamide in snacks from other vegetables has begun to be conducted more recently. Thus, this review aims to present a detailed discussion on the occurrence of acrylamide in alternative vegetable snacks that are consumed as being healthier and to address relevant questions about the effectiveness of mitigation strategies that have been developed for these products. Through this research, it was observed that, depending on the vegetable, the levels of this contaminant can be quite variable. Alternative snacks, such as sweet potato, carrot and beetroot may also contain high levels of acrylamide and need to be monitored even more closely than potatoes snacks, as less information is available on these food products. Furthermore, various pretreatments (e.g. bleaching, immersion in solutions containing chemical substances) and processing conditions (heating methods, time, temperature) can reduce the formation of acrylamide (54–99 %) in alternative vegetable snacks.