TY - RPRT T1 - Acrylamide in other foods_Determination of acrylamide levels in some food categories and estimation of the exposure for the Belgian population Y1 - 2020 A1 - Philippe Szternfeld A1 - Virginie Van Leeuw A1 - Mirjana Andjelkovic KW - Acrylamide KW - exposure KW - other foods AB -

Acrylamide is a chemical substance that has been classified as probably carcinogenic (group 2A) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) due to its carcinogenic effect on rodents. Since its discovery in food by the University of Stockholm in 2002, the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA (formerly called Scientific Committee on Food)) recommended to organize national and international research (including industry) on the elucidation of acrylamide formation in food and mitigations measures in order to reduce dietary exposition as low as achievable. The Regulation (EU) 2017/2158 established in its Annexes I and II, all these mitigation measures. Furthermore, this Regulation also assigns benchmark levels for certain food categories that the food sector should be able to achieve when respecting the mitigation measures. However, not all food categories are included in this Regulation and other types of food may contain significant quantities of acrylamide. To remedy this shortcoming, the European Commission published Recommendation (EU) 2019/1888 concerning the monitoring of the presence of acrylamide in certain other foodstuffs. In parallel, EFSA also issued a call on the 25th of October 2019 to collect data on a European scale on the levels of acrylamide in foodstuffs based on chia seeds or chia flour and which have undergone a cooking process. This call echoes a EFSA scientific opinion of March 2019 stating that partial substitution of wheat flour with chia seed flour can lead to higher levels of acrylamide in the final product. This study is also part of the discussions on Novel Food Regulation (EU) 2015/2283. Therefore, this research project was issued in order to collect missing data on acrylamide contamination for different food categories, as targeted by Recommendation (EU) 2019/1888 and the EFSA call. A secondary objective was the determination of the influence of the cooking method used (oven versus deep-fryer) on the production of acrylamide specifically for potato-based foods. Next, the impact of domestic cooking practices of the Belgian population were investigated. Afterwards, the concentration data were combined with the consumption data of the most recent National Food Consumption Survey (FCS2014) and the risk of the Belgian consumer related to exposure of acrylamide was investigated using the Margin of Exposure approach.

PB - Sciensano CY - Elsene, Belgium ER -