The Food Standards Agency says overcooking potatoes and bread raises levels of the carcinogenic chemical acrylamide and their new campaign, Go For Gold, is aimed at discouraging families from cooking their spuds into golden brown roasties , as acrylamide has been shown to cause disease in lab rats and mice.
Steve Wearne, the FSA’s director of policy, says: “The majority of people are not aware that acrylamide exists, or that they might be able to reduce their intake.”
But starchy foods aren’t the only things we need to be worry about. There are a raft of products that could be dangerous when over or undercooked, or even reheated.
Nutritionists Jo Travers and Annemarie Aburrow talk us through the risks of some not-so-innocent food items and how to handle them carefully.
