Fried Foods, Acrylamide and Cancer: What Do You Need to Know?

Do you love potato chips, fried chicken, or the deep southern delicacies that require a vat of oil? You may want to rethink that habit. A carcinogen – acrylamide – is lurking in the fried foods you eat.

Research conducted since 2002 by multiple parties, including the premiering Swedish study, have warned that baking, roasting, and frying, the very traditional methods which have been used to prepare food for centuries, may just be causing cancer. The Royal Society of Chemistry has confirmed the study, as have a host of other scientists.

Can Fried Foods Cause Cancer?

Scientists can’t seem to pinpoint how acrylamide forms in our cooked foods, but it gives pause to the suggestions of raw foodists who offer that cooked food is no better than a disease waiting to happen.

They claim, among other things, that cooked food is cancerous and also devoid of many vitamins, minerals, and enzymes which help your body to digest food.

Deep-fried food could possibly be cancerous, but this particular carcinogen is also found in many high carb foods that have been processed at high temperatures, including crackers, cereals, French fries, and even baked goods.

Acrylamide hides in quite a few unsuspecting places.

The problem is that if only eaten in small amounts, the carcinogen is fought with antioxidants and other methods of creating homeostasis in the cells of the body, but many people, Americans specifically, eat way too many fried and highly cooked foods. This can adversely affect their bladders, breasts, colons, rectums, kidneys, and ovaries, as well as the organs of the mouth and throat, like the larynx. Aside from this carcinogen, fried foods also create inflammation in the body, and many packaged foods are high in other no-nos like high fructose corn syrup and MSG.

How to Reduce Acrylamide

Here’s what you can do to avoid the carcinogen, acrylamide, as much as possible in the foods you eat:

• Eat raw whenever you can. If you have to fry a vegetable to eat it because you don’t care for the taste, then try to replace it with a vegetable you can eat sans the oil bath.
• If you must use oil, use it with high cooking temperature set points. One of the healthiest types of oil to use when cooking is coconut oil.
• Cook at lower temperatures for a longer period of time. The fewer burnt or brown edges, the likely less it is that acrylamide will be present.
• Never eat burnt food.
• Try lightly sautéing foods instead of cooking them to death. This will also enhance their flavor, and keep most of the vitamins and nutrients intact.
• Steaming is another way to cook food without creating acrylamide.
• Non-organic foods have been shown to cook with higher levels of acrylamide. Skip the GMO and stay with certified organic foods; especially potatoes, since these are so often fried or baked.
• Minimize processed foods, and read labels at the grocery store. Many foods are cooked at high temperatures without stating so. The less processed something is, the safer it is.
• Cleanse this and other carcinogens from your body effectively and periodically with lemon, cilantro, ginger, milk thistle, and other natural cleansing tools.