Dietary acrylamide: What happens during digestion

- Effect of digestion on acrylamide content of various products is studied.
- Acrylamide content increases after gastric digestion in the studied products.
- Intestinal stage reduces acrylamide content in French fries and chips.
- Blanched/air-fried potatoes present low bioavailable acrylamide.

Acrylamide is a well-known potentially carcinogen compound formed during thermal processing as an intermediate of Maillard reactions. Three objectives were addressed: the impact of gastric digestion on acrylamide content of French Fries, chips, chicken nuggets, onions rings, breakfast cereals, biscuits, crackers, instant coffee and coffee substitute; the acrylamide content evolution during gastrointestinal digestion of French fries and chips; and the effectiveness of blanching and air-frying on acrylamide mitigation after gastrointestinal digestion.A significant increase (p-value <0.05) in acrylamide content was observed for most of the products after gastric digestion (maximum registered for sweet biscuits, from 30 ± 8 to 150 ± 48 µg/kg). However, at the end of the intestinal stage, acrylamide values were statistically similar (p-value = 0.132) for French fries and lower than the initial values (before digestion) in potato chips (p-value = 0.027). Finally, the low acrylamide content found in blanched and air-fried samples, remained still lower than for deep fried samples even after gastrointestinal digestion.