The Seattle Times: Health: Lawsuit filed over labeling potato chips and French fries

The story that has been brewing for sometime over whether snack foods shouold contain a warning due to the amount of a cancer causing agaent they contain picked up steam as the State of California sued "sued nine fast-food giants yesterday, saying the law requires them to tell the public their potato chips and French fries contain a toxic chemical."Seattle Times.

The toxic chemical is "Acrylamide — known to cause cancer in the reproductive organs of laboratory animals exposed to high levels — has been on the state's list of carcinogens since 1990. But it was not known to be present in food until 2002, when scientists in Sweden discovered it in starchy foods cooked at high temperatures."Seattle Times.

Those being sued include "Frito-Lay, KFC, McDonald's, Wendy's International and Procter & Gamble Distributing." Predictably they maintain innocence: "Lynn Markley, a spokeswoman for Frito-Lay, said, 'There is no scientific evidence that the presence of acrylamide in food causes illness, and our Frito-Lay snacks are absolutely safe.' " Seattle Times.

In layperson's terms what this is over is that the toxin (which has been a known cancer agent for some time) becomes more pronounced when certian foods (especially starchy foods) are heated at high temperatures (especially when fried). Health advocates want warnings on the foods.

Making matters worse is that no one really know how much of the toxin is in any given food as levels vary even for the same product. For instance the San Francisco Chronicle reports that:

"... Burger King fries, tested at three locations, contained 197, 220 and 369 parts per billion....Wendy's fries, tested at five locations, ranged form a low of 169 parts per billion to a high of 302, far lower than a sample of Popeyes french fries, which contained 1,030 parts per billion. Pringle Ridges Potato Crisps contained 1,286 parts per billion, but Pringles Sweet mesquite BBQ Flavored Crisps had 2,510. Pringles Original Crisps had 693."

Interestingly this is a problem as well for other foods from breads and crackers to even olives.

For more on the problems with Acrylamide, click here. Or for teh more techincal among you try this link for a collection of research papers on the topic.

My take? Is this a health threat? Yes. Is it a major health threat? Well to be honest no one really knows. However, I am willing to go out on a limb and suggest that the fat and largely empty calories found in many of the mentioned foods are more of a health threat than the cancer potential. What is also interesing is that this appears to be more of an attack on so-called "junk foods" than anything else since we know that many otherwise nutritious foods (breads, olives, some nuts) also have the chemical.

I doubt we've heard the end of this.