Getting rid of acrylamide in cereals.(News in brief)

Food Engineering & Ingredients, March, 2007

Acrylamide is considered as a probable carcinogen and is produced from foods such as potatoes, coffee, wheat and other cereals when the asparagine and sugars in them are are fried, baked or roasted. Scientists at Rothamsted Research and the University of Reading, UK are trying to find ways of reducing acrylamide by investigating how to reduce its precursors in cereal plants. A team under Prof. Halford has found that this problem is exacerbated by the fact that growing wheat in low sulphur soil conditions drastically increases the amount of asparagine in the grain of the plants and thus the amount of acrylamide produced. With over 20% of soils in Europe, Australia and other developed countries having low sulphur levels in their soils Prof. Halford suggests that the risk...

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