Acrylamide formation in some Egyptian foods as affected by food processing conditions and pre-frying treatments

Abstract

The objective of the present study is to estimate acrylamide levels in some different food samples from Egyptian local market and to determine the levels of acrylamide formation during different processing conditions, and effects of pre-frying treatments on acrylamide reduction in some Egyptian foods. Results showed that in market samples, the highest mean acrylamide level value was in coffee "Bin Shaheen" with cardamom dark color (5181.61 µg/kg) which was a highly significant value compared with all of other samples. The mean of acrylamide concentration of all potato market samples was 25.97 µg/kg. The highest mean levels in prepared meals was in onion ''dark color'' (309.35 µg/kg), while in homemade samples, the highest mean value of acrylamide content was in fried noodles at 120°C/6 min (310.75 µg/kg). The effect of different temperatures and/or times on acrylamide formation in fried rice and fried potatoes results are recorded. It was observed that the increasing of frying temperatures from 110 to 175°C increase the acrylamide levels in rice and potatoes, the same trend was happened by time increasing from 15 to 20 min. In addition, the highest acrylamide value was 3066.38 µg/kg at 180°C/20 min followed by 1860.28 and 1755.34 µg/kg at 180°C/15 min and 160°C/20 min, respectively. The effects of different pre-frying treatments on reduction of acrylamide formation of fried rice at 180°C for 10 min were studied. Soaking rice in acetic acid (1%) for 20 min caused the highest significant (p ≤ 0.05) decreases in acrylamide content compared with control. This reduction was 94.65% followed by soaking rice in citric acid (1%) for 20 min, which gave acrylamide reduction of 93.7%. Generally, soaking rice in water or different solutions caused significant reduction in acrylamide formation (89.1 to 94.65%).

Keywords: Acrylamide, potato, rice, soaking, coffee, frying temperature.