Acrylamide risk in food products: The shortbread case study

Abstract

Among advanced hypotheses concerning acrylamide formation in cooked food, the Maillard browning reactions of sugars and amino acids have received much attention as the most likely pathway. Bakery products such as biscuits represent a class of food in which the effect of ingredients and processing promote acrylamide formation. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified acrylamide as “potential carcinogen to humans”; therefore, there is an urgent requirement for the development and validation of sensitive, robust and inexpensive analytical methods to quantify acrylamide in different food matrices to the μg kg ⁻¹ levels. The aims of this research were the set up of an analytical method to determine acrylamide concentration in shortbread biscuits, and the study of the technological parameters influencing the acrylamide formation during shortbread processing. Five technological tests were conducted to produce five different experimental types of shortbread. The experimental shortbreads were obtained using different concentrations of baking agents (sodium bicarbonate and ammonium bicarbonate) and applying different cooking temperatures and different times. A HPLC-DAD reliable and sensitive method to determine acrylamide in shortbread was achieved. The chromatographic separation was achieved with isocratic analysis in a 15-min run. The coefficient of determination of the acrylamide standard calibration curve is 0.997; the limit of detection was 8 μg Kg⁻¹, and the limit of quantification was 28 μg Kg⁻¹. The recovery test was conducted adding three different concentrations of acrylamide standard solution to the blank sample. The acrylamide recovery ranged from 90.5 ± 0.3% to 99.1 ± 1.8%. The results showed that the ammonium bicarbonate concentration in shortbread, and the high temperature, influenced the acrylamide formation during the processing highlighting that the final acrylamide concentration is influenced by the processing parameters.