Acrylamide

[Muse]

Was at most dimly aware of this, I've seen the term but never researched it. A comment to current NY Times article on sourdough baking got me curious.

This is toxic, can be carcinogenic. So, to be avoided, obviously.

Well, poked a bit and this to-me very informative page explains a whole lot. Very interesting is the comment down in the page that the darker coffee roasts have less of this. Counter intuitive!

Should You be Concerned About Acrylamide in Coffee?

Acrylamide is a chemical that is found in most types of coffee. Concerns have been raised about acrylamide causing harm to coffee drinkers.

www.healthline.com

Broader picture:

5 facts about acrylamide and cancer risk

We all want to know what we’re eating is safe for us, so should we avoid foods that contain the chemical acrylamide? Dietitian Kendall Stelwagen shares the facts.

www.mdanderson.org

 

[Torn Mind]

Avoiding fried foods might have been why Nathan Pritikin did die with no plaque or cardiovascular issues. However, since he adopted an extreme diet with numerous confounding variables adjusted, it cannot be certain.

I don't think I have eaten fried foods in months except for eggs, and very rarely for years. Used to eat fried foods fairly frequently.

As most meats are fried with breading or a starch, it could be that it is the acrylamide from the starch being fried being part of why such foods have unhealthy results.

A lot of the authorities send mixed messages, probably to protect the food industry. If people stop eating cakes, fried chicken, French fries, that's lost economic activity and tax revenue.

 

[pcgeek11]

Everything causes cancer in California.
/s

 

[lxskllr]

Coffee drinkers live longer...

Caffeinated or not, coffee linked with longer life

People who drink up to eight cups of coffee per day may slightly lower their risk of early death compared with non-drinkers, according to a large new study. And it doesn’t appear to matter if the c…

www.hsph.harvard.edu

Also everything is bad for you. We adapted to an environment that was, and continues to try to kill us. Everything that's "good" for us, is also bad. We adapted to tolerate those compounds, and they may be harmful to other creatures that haven't adapted. "Good" is conditional. So... Don't eat mercury, open the garage when you run the car, and don't worry about trace elements you really have no control over.

 

[Muse]

I've cut back on coffee in recent years, not really by intention. It's just that I have a sense about coffee. I feel saturated at times, I don't want any more. Most recently, I most often don't finish my largish cup (11 fluid ounces of fresh ground, fresh brewed organic dark roast). I usually leave 1-3 oz. in the cup, again, not by intention, it just happens that way.

I probably get most of my water from my home brewed coffee. I never duck into a commercial establishment for takeout coffee.

Info linked in the OP IIRC says that instant has double the amount of acrylamide as fresh brewed, FYI. Also, as stated in OP, the darker the roast the less acrylamide, a real eyebrow raiser.

I don't eat French fries any more. Reason being I rarely eat out and I stopped making them in my kitchen. I do bake a fair amount and undoubtedly have been unwittingly creating and eating acrylamide by virtue of that. I toast a bit, not real dark.

 

[Torn Mind]

Coffee drinkers live longer...

Caffeinated or not, coffee linked with longer life

People who drink up to eight cups of coffee per day may slightly lower their risk of early death compared with non-drinkers, according to a large new study. And it doesn’t appear to matter if the c…

www.hsph.harvard.edu

Also everything is bad for you. We adapted to an environment that was, and continues to try to kill us. Everything that's "good" for us, is also bad. We adapted to tolerate those compounds, and they may be harmful to other creatures that haven't adapted. "Good" is conditional. So... Don't eat mercury, open the garage when you run the car, and don't worry about trace elements you really have no control over.

If someone goes mostly low sugar, low starch, and occasionally gets some coffee, it's probably an ok dose.

I doubt there will be any funding to study whether it's the acrylamide itself, the starch itself, or an interaction between the two that causes harmful effects. For example, measuring the effects of someone who eats only McDonalds fries versus those who eat "keto burgers".

We have evolved to like certain things because it ensured survival "back then". A little burn flavor means the food, usually meat, is sterile and won't result in parasites like worms screwing you over. While the starch-based agriculture is more recent, enough time for certain populations to "like" the smell of toasted bread also could have developed for similar reasons. But high temps on meat also creates nasty compounds. With meat, you get heterocyclic amines. Cooking meat like beef to well done, will result in greater concentrations of heterocyclic amines.

In the wild days, it is likely that humans behave like other carnivores and target organ meats like liver, kidney, etc. Due to scarcity, it is unlikely they could just dispose of a compromised liver even after visual inspection. So they probably would have had to subject it to fire to kill the little nasties.

For acrylamide, it's already near condemnation. Workplace exposure is poisonous, mice can't handle it. It may be a mere bystander, but then that means the starch or sugar it is usually present with is the actual culprit.

Evolution is not "absolute perfection", but rather a response to environmental pressure. There are tradeoffs for obtaining certain traits. The overall tradeoff for most of humanity is that other organisms were more acutely damaging to survival than the formation of poisons through cooking to kill said organisms. (No, they teach tradeoffs in biology. That's something only economics students get routine exposure to as a concept)

 

[igor_kavinski]

I don't eat French fries any more. Reason being I rarely eat out and I stopped making them in my kitchen.

I can attest that French fries are pretty toxic. For a month, I ate a full plate of french fries with a glass of mango milkshake regularly. Reason? I was lazy and getting these from the local restaurant was pretty economical. Plus, they were yummy as heck!

Unfortunately or fortunately, something like 35 or 40 days later, I went to a doc for some food poisoning related symptoms. He asked if I felt any tingling anywhere. I said I felt that a lot sometimes in the tips of my fingers. He prescribed the hbA1C test and it came back around 5.6 which was borderline. After that, it just got worse and worse. Had to stop eating bread and coffee coz both combined would result in pretty hurtful acidic urine. While all this was going on, I made the mistake of eating mushrooms coz they "normally" lower blood sugar pretty quickly due to D-Ribose sugar in them. That sugar is actually in excess in the blood in diabetic patients so extra dose of that from the mushrooms led to a pretty serious case of nephritis. I lost sleep, felt phosphorous trying to escape my skin all the time (it's like itching but much worse and less tolerable) and my face and legs and feet swelled up. Went on a 6 day fruit juice diet, drinking mostly grapefruit juice and watermelon juice. That helped a lot and brought down the swelling. Spent some more time (maybe a year) on restrictive diets trying to control my blood glucose and using berberine for large meals. Finally had it in 2021 and went on a less than 1200 calories "rice and fruit only" diet for 15 days and my diabetes has been in remission since.

All this could have been avoided by not eating french fries straight for a month. Definitely at the very top of my dumbest, most expensive mistakes.

 

[Torn Mind]

The studies in mice and rats are fairly compelling, such as these

In Vivo Investigation of the Effect of Dietary Acrylamide and Evaluation of Its Clinical Relevance in Colon Cancer

Dietary exposure to acrylamide (AA) has been linked with carcinogenicity in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. However, epidemiologic data on AA intake in relation to cancer risk are limited and contradictory, while the potential cancer-inducing molecular ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

However, the counterpoint, even if influence by food industries, is not completely irrelevant. Perhaps certain foods contain chemicals that negate or reduce the effects of acrylamide.
This following study does betray a degree of bias and influence, but some data and inferences can be accepted
Biased actions include the selection of the study method itself, choosing liver cancer over colon cancer, using the Japanese population that reports not eating much potatoes or biscuits, and the ridiculously overstretched conclusion "In conclusion, the results of the present study indicate that there was no association between dietary intake of acrylamide and risk of liver cancer. Further studies with biomarkers of the internal dose of acrylamide are needed to investigate the carcinogenicity of acrylamide in humans."

Dietary Acrylamide Intake and the Risk of Liver Cancer: The Japan Public Health Center-Based Prospective Study

Acrylamide has been studied for its carcinogenicity in experimental animals, causing tumors at several organ sites, and has been considered probably carcinogenic to humans as well. Given the small number of epidemiological studies that have been conducted, ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

acryilamide vs qurectin - Google Suche

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Everything causes cancer in California.
/s

-Dude, you need a Prop 65 warning on that post

Edit: Seriously though, if coffee causes cancer then at least I have the benefit of knowing what I'm going to die from.

 

[igor_kavinski]

if coffee causes cancer

Caffeine is actually supposed to shorten telomeres leading to the end of cell division which is the opposite of what cancer is (cells keep dividing, possibly coz the telomeres don't shorten due to some mutation).

So drinking coffee a lot would stop most senile cells from living long enough to become cancerous.