Evaluation of acrylamide formation in potatoes during deep-frying: The effect of operation and configuration

It is nowadays well known that heating, which is carried out to improve the hygienic, sensory and nutritional properties of foods, can be also responsible for the development of acrylamide. Acrylamide levels between a few ppb and in excess of 1000 ppb have been found in many heated foods. As acrylamide is classified as a probable human carcinogen, the knowledge of critical processing variables leading to its formation is needed to ensure safety requirements. In this work, acrylamide formation during deep-frying of potato samples is analyzed in space and time through a joint HPLC-MS/MS measurement and a computational fluid dynamics simulation. Such an approach allowed to describe the thermal and physico-chemical history of processed potatoes to bring forth their complete and validated multidimensional distributions of acrylamide concentrations during deep-frying. The effect of a number of operational parameters have been scrutinized to make the simulation results closer to the industrial settings.