Acrylamide is a potential carcinogen produced at higher temperatures while frying, roasting and baking. Starch-rich foods like potatoes are known to produce acrylamide in increasing concentrations than other kinds of foods. This study focuses on mitigation of acrylamide in sweet potato, taro and cassava samples subjected to various heat-treatment processes like oil frying, air frying and baking. Dipping of tuber slices in solutions of garlic, green tea, sodium chloride, yeast, distilled water, whey and blanching prior to frying the tubers were found to be effective pre-treatment methods. However, the effect of the treatments depended on the sample and mode of processing. Yeast was found to produce a significant reduction in the acrylamide production in taro (98.64%) and garlic pretreatment reduced acrylamide in deep fat fried cassava samples up to 95.62%. Similarly, air fried taro samples dipped in distilled water was found to significantly reduce the browning reaction up to 96.51%; primarily due to the fact that distilled water was found to block the reaction between precursors like asparagine and reducing sugars, thereby preventing the formation of acrylamide. Influence of reducing sugar on the formation of acrylamide, when fried at different temperatures was analyzed using Response Surface Methodology (RSM), clearly indicating that the amount of reducing sugars decreased at higher temperatures with increase in acrylamide content. The attempts in the study clearly shows that simple and cost effective pretreatments can be successful applied to produce healthy tuber products with reduced concentration of acrylamide.

Practical applications

Fried foods are popular among all age groups. However, the acrylamide produced during its processing is a carcinogen of serious concern. Mitigation of this component is an urgent need. The tested simple and cost-effective pre-treatment methods can be applied for acrylamide mitigation in ready-to-eat food processing sector. Moreover these can be practically used by street-food vendors to prepare healthier and safer processed snack foods.