| Abstract | Acrylamide (AA) is a toxic compound, present in a wide range of heat-processed foods prepared from materials rich in reducing sugar and asparagine. Since the time of discovery of AA in foods, no study has considered the effect of precursors, commonly used methods and temperatures of cooking on the formation of the contaminant in popular West African (WA) foods. Consequently, this study focused on the impact of these parameters on the acrylamide levels in WA foods including akara, bread, buns, chin-chin, doughnut, fish-roll, meat-pie, plantain-chips, puff-puff, and yam-chips.
The study evaluated the effect of baking and frying at 150, 180 and 210°C for 5, 10 and 15 mins on the AA levels in the selected WA foods. Potentiometric method based on the use of ammonium ion selective electrode and immobilised acrylamide amidohydrolase was used to test 150 samples of each WA food prepared using the different cooking temperatures.
In addition, recognised methods requiring glucose oxidase and asparaginase were used for measuring the amount of precursors including glucose and asparagine in the unprocessed food materials.The relationship between the contaminant and the precursors was then determined through correlation and regression analysis of the data obtained. Independent T-test of equality of sample means at α=0.05 showed no statistical significant difference (p ˃ 0.05) in the AA produced by using baking and frying at the same temperature. However, ANOVA for the AA concentrations indicated that increasing baking and frying temperatures significantly affected the amount of the process contaminants i.e. (p < 0.05). Highest readings for the contaminant was noted for WA foods processed for longer times at 210°C, while the lowest measurements were obtained for those processed for 5mins at 150°C. The lowest amounts of acrylamide (25±7 μg/kg) was detected in buns baked at 150°C, while the highest levels of the contaminant (703±27 and 706±13 μg/kg) were noticed in yam and plantain chips fried at 210°C. Overall, a significant positive relationship (p < 0.01) was observed between AA present in the food products and the precursors measured in the food materials. The strongest and weakest determination coefficients (r2) of 0.88 and 0.30 were observed for WA plantain-chips and bread respectively. In conclusion, the temperature of cooking, asparagine and glucose levels in WA food materials are major determinants of the AA formed in the selected WA food products. |
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