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http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/28/business/28FOOD.html

Chemical in Starchy Foods Baffles Health Groups

By GREG WINTER

wo international health and safety organizations said yesterday that they were still a long way from solving the riddle of why a potential carcinogen appears in staples like French fries, bread and potato chips, and how much of a risk, if any, its presence may pose.

The organizations, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, convened an emergency meeting of scientists from around the world this week in response to separate studies conducted by the national food agencies of Sweden, Britain and Norway.

All three concluded that unexpectedly high levels of acrylamide, a known carcinogen in rats, appears in certain carbohydrates after frying or baking them at high temperatures, though none of the agencies seemed to know why.

The findings have set off a wide-ranging debate about food safety, both here and abroad, offering ammunition to consumer groups calling for an overhaul of eating habits and rattling a food industry that largely depends on their staying the same.

As the three-day gathering came to a close, the two international organizations neither confirmed nor refuted the validity of the studies, saying only that the number of samples tested, totaling no more than a few hundred, was too small to provide any certainty on the issue. Even some of the most basic questions, like how acrylamide, previously known as an industrial chemical, could form in the cooking process, remained something of a mystery.

"After reviewing all the available data, we have concluded that the new findings constitute a serious problem," Dr. Dieter Arnold, the chairman of the meeting, said in a statement. "But our current limited knowledge does not allow us to answer all the questions which have been asked by consumers, regulators and other interested parties."

Among the most pressing issues raised at the meeting was whether consumers should temper their reliance on starchy foods, particularly potato chips, which had the highest concentration of acrylamide in the studies.

The groups had hoped to answer that question, if possible, but without more evidence they merely reiterated the standard recommendations of governments and health organizations across the globe: Eat a balanced diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables.

"That's what we have always said," said Susan Ferenc, senior scientific adviser to the Grocery Manufacturers of America, a trade group, adding that food companies have begun conducting acrylamide tests of their own.

The Food and Drug Administration announced several weeks ago that it would do the same.

The specter of a more stringent advisory, one that would warn consumers away from starchy foods, has been looming over the food industry ever since the Swedish study was first released in April.

Potatoes, for example, are by far America's largest vegetable crop — bringing farmers roughly $2.7 billion in 2000, compared with about $1.8 billion for lettuce or tomatoes — and nearly half of the harvest in the United States ends up being fried.

McDonald's alone goes through about 3.2 billion pounds of potatoes each year, about 7 percent of what the nation grows, almost all of which plunge into the deep fryer, according to Salomon Smith Barney. When the rest of the fast-food chains are factored in, Americans consume about 600 million helpings of French fries every month.

As for potato chips, nearly $2.7 billion worth of bags were sold in supermarkets and drugstores over the last year, according to Information Resources, a market research firm. One survey by the Department of Agriculture found that the average American snacker eats 33 pounds of potato chips a year, although the snack food industry insists the figure is closer to 6.5 pounds.

Even if acrylamide, often used to help remove solids from drinking water, is proved to reside in starchy foods, the threat of cancer is far from certain. While large doses of the chemical, are known to cause nerve damage in people, acrylamide is deemed "a probable" human carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency because only rodents have been shown to develop tumors from exposure to it.

Moreover, some scientists point out, there are many natural substances in food that breed tumors in rats or mice. Roasted coffee, for one, contains more than 1,000 chemicals, according to the Carcinogenic Potency Project at the University of California. Of the 30 that have been tested, 21 are rodent carcinogens.

The many plants that people eat also contain thousands of natural pesticides, produced to repel insects and other predators. Seventy-one of them have been tested, and 37 have been shown to cause cancer in rodents, the Potency Project says.

But while chemicals naturally abound in food, it is the amount of acrylamide people are likely to consume that the international organizations found so striking. The substance itself is probably no more potent than the carcinogenic aromatic hydrocarbons formed by grilling or frying meat, the organizations said, but because starchy foods are such a prevalent part of most diets, "the intake levels for acrylamide are likely to be higher."

In the Swedish study, researchers concluded that the average daily intake of acrylamide, gleaned from French fries, biscuits, bread, breakfast cereals and other foods, comes to as much as 40 micrograms, about 80 times what the E.P.A. allows in a liter of water.

Other sources of acrylamide, like cosmetics, drinking water and possibly even the human body itself, could bring that number up to about 70 micrograms, the W.H.O. and F.A.O. said, "a range significantly below that which is known to cause nerve damage in laboratory animals."

Acrylamide is also useful in the making of plastics, dyes and adhesives.

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