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.