Browned toast and potatoes are 'potential cancer risk', say food scientists

Source= BBC news

Bread, Chips and Potatoes should be cooked to a golden yellow colour, rather than brown, to reduce our intake of a chemical 'acrylamide' which could cause cancer. Acrylamide is produced when starchy foods are roasted, died or grilled for too long at a high temperature. The Food Standards Agency recommends carefully following cooking instructions and try to avoid browning, they went on to say that you should also avoid storing potatoes and parsnips in the fridge, this is because sugar levels rise in the vegetables at low temperatures, and this could potentially increase the amount of Acrylamide produced when cooking.

The Food standard agency says it is not clear exactly how much acrylamide can be tolerated by people, but it is believed that we are eating too much of it. Research in Animals has shown that the chemical is toxic to their DNA and causes cancer, so scientist have assumed that it is the same with people, although there is no evidence.

I chose this story as i thought that it was quite shocking to see that something that most people eat on a daily basis could slowly be killing them. It is even worse to think that this could be the main cause for most peoples cancer (along with smoking).