Novel Approach to the Acrylamides Build-up Issue In Potato Chips Frying
When potatoes are fried, dangerous compounds known as acrylamides are formed. Aspects like the potatoes themselves, storage conditions, and the heat treatment procedure all have an impact on the acrylamide content of potato chips.
Together with the food packaging business Produsentpakkeriet in Frosta, northeast of Trondheim, Norway, researchers have been examining acrylamides.
“Here we face an additional challenge because colder growth conditions often mean that less mature potatoes are used to make chips. Less mature potatoes contain more sugar, and this can lead to a higher acrylamide content in the chips that we make from them”, researcher Solveig Uglem at SINTEF, who has been heading the research team, mentioned.
Insightful information about the ideal methods of preserving potatoes to minimize food waste has been made available by the new project. It has demonstrated how to attain the best possible chip quality and reduce the possibility of acrylamide production.
The researchers have also been investigating the application of straightforward techniques for determining the sugar content of potatoes as part of a three-year study. It’s critical to take these readings both before and after harvesting as well as while the potatoes are stored to make sure the sugar levels are low enough to allow the potatoes to be turned into chips.
The study found that assessments of the amounts of sucrose and aspartic acid in potatoes provided the most accurate predictions of the levels of acrylamide that chips will acquire following deep frying.
“However, this method is slow and requires the use of expensive instruments. We’ve found that measuring glucose concentrations using a blood sugar meter that anyone can purchase at a local pharmacy offers a quicker and more accessible means of getting an indication of whether a potato’s sugar content is too high,” Erlend Indergård, who has been participating in the project, summed up.
The growers can determine whether or not their potatoes are ready for harvest by checking the glucose content. If a batch of potatoes has been rejected because the sugar content is too high, it is both unsustainable and can cause significant financial loss. Thus, it is important to encourage potato farmers to monitor the amount of glucose in their crop both immediately following harvest and throughout storage. They will be able to respond if they see any changes in quality because of this.