Health warning for food with acrylamide content

I learned from a friend living in the United States that the State's attorney general of California recently settled a law suit with one fast-food company requiring that acrylamide content of foods carry a health warning.

From Wikipedia, the online free encyclopedia, a Dutch study on 62000 women over an 11 year period has recently concluded that those who ingest more acrylamide in their regular diet are twice as likely to develop endometrial or ovarian cancer.

Acrylamide can be found in baked and fried starchy foods such as potato chips, French fries, breads and cookies. Our young generation love affair with these foods may increase their cancer risk.

Cancer incidences are rising quite rapidly in Singapore with more young people being diagnosed of cancer each year. Hence it is crucial for the various authorities to review the safety level of acrylamide in our foods.

Besides spending million of dollars in cancer treatment/drugs research, more could also be done to identify carcinogenic agents in our daily necessities in order to minimize cancer risk. Such products should carry a health warning which will help the consumers make an informed choice.

In the meantime, for those who want to learn which foods contain acrylamide, please check out the list of foods from the FDA findings at http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/acrydata.html.

Note : On 27 February 2008, I wrote the above letter to ST Forum but it was rejected for publication by their editor.