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If your preferred toaster setting tends to set off the smoke alarm, it may be alarming to learn that burnt toast could contain a potentially cancer-causing substance.
But scientists may have the solution in the form of genetically altered wheat, which leads to bread with lower levels of the substance acrylamide.
Until this bread arrives, how much should we be worrying about acrylamide, and is there anything we can do to avoid it?
Acrylamide has been added relatively recently to the long list of food ingredients that people get exercised about. It was initially thought to be a carcinogenic chemical mainly found in plastics, until 2002, when the Swedish National Food Administration announced it had been found in some common fried and baked foods.
They discovered that it forms in certain kinds of starchy foods, especially bread and potatoes, when they are cooked at high temperatures. Sales of chips in Sweden nearly halved, though they soon recovered.
Acrylamide is one of hundreds of similar compounds formed by a chemical reaction between sugars and amino acids – the building blocks of proteins – called the Maillard reaction.
Substances formed during this chemical reaction give rise to many of the delicious tastes, smells and dark colours of well-cooked food, like crispy roast potatoes and charred meat – and they are part of why toast tastes distinctly different to bread.
Acrylamide itself is not dark (or tasty) but food that is very dark from cooking generally has more of it.
Sources of acrylamide
Toast, especially if burnt Crackers and crispbread Roast potatoes and chips Potato crisps Crisps made from vegetables, like parsnips CoffeeThe trouble is that it is unclear just how much of a cancer risk acrylamide is. The main evidence against it comes from research on rats, but they were dosed with much higher levels than people normally eat, no matter how burnt their toast.
Studies into whether people who eat more acrylamide are more likely to get cancer have generally been negative. “We don’t have enough evidence from [human] studies to say that it can be associated with increased risk of cancer,” said Dr Federica Laguzzi, a diet researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
Cancer Research UK also said in 2024: “Eating acrylamide in burnt food is unlikely to increase cancer risk. It is true that animal studies have shown that acrylamide has cancer-causing effects. But these studies gave animals very high levels of acrylamide. We are very unlikely to eat this amount of acrylamide in our diet.”
But others disagree. The World Health Organisation classifies the substance as a “probable carcinogen”. The EU has maximum acrylamide levels for bread and other wheat-based foods.
And the UK Food Standards Agency was concerned enough that in 2017 it started a campaign against overcooking food, called “Go for Gold” – which advises that things like toast, chips and parsnips should be a light golden brown colour, and no darker. Burnt toast is a no-no.
Food companies, too, became concerned about acrylamide in their products and looked into ways to reduce its formation.
It is a tricky problem because acrylamide forms when there is a reaction between sugar and one particular amino acid called asparagine, and levels of those substances in wheat and potatoes are affected by their growing conditions. Just adding a different fertiliser to wheat helps reduce levels somewhat.
Different potato varieties have different acrylamide levels (Photo: Stephen Elmore)Most crisps today are a lighter colour than they were 20 years ago because they use potato varieties with less sugar, said Dr Stephen Elmore, a food scientist at the University of Reading, who has worked with crisp manufacturers on this issue. “It doesn’t affect the flavour,” he said.
A strain of wheat with half the levels of acrylamide was also developed 15 years ago, but this gives a lower yield for farmers. The latest development is that UK agricultural institute Rothamsted Research has used gene editing to make wheat with 90 per cent lower acrylamide when bread is toasted – and no loss of wheat yield.
Don’t expect the gene-edited bread in the supermarket soon, though. Gene-edited foods cannot yet be sold in the UK.
They used to be banned because of EU laws. After Brexit, a new law came into effect that allows firms to apply on a case-by-case basis for approval to allow them to be sold in England (although not the rest of the UK).
But the wheat still needs to be tested in field trials. No one has yet even tasted it, said Professor Nigel Halford, who helped create the gene-edited wheat.
That’s not to mention the fact that the Government plans to bring UK food and plant laws more into line with EU laws in a bid to ease trade barriers; whether gene-edited foods will be an exception is still under negotiation.
The EU might be receptive to the gene-edited wheat because it has been trying for years to bring in new lower limits for acrylamide in a range of foods. On the other hand, long-standing EU sentiment against genetically altered foods might win out.
How much should people care about acrylamide in their diet in the meantime? Laguzzi said: “Personally, I don’t worry about it.”
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