this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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Today I Learned

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The US potato industry brings in US$240 million annually, and demand for taters in all their wonderful processed shapes and sizes is year-round. As such, a certain amount of stock in season is sent to cold storage to supply the demand. However, thanks to a normal biological function in the root vegetable, low temperatures trigger a mechanism that converts starches to sugars. When processed, these tubers that have experienced cold-induced sweetening (CIS) appear darker when cooked.

Unfortunately, it's more than potato-skin deep, as this darkened chip is a crispy red flag – it indicates elevated levels of acrylamide, a chemical that has been associated with increased cancer risk due to its carcinogenic properties.

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[–] ziltoid101@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago

Acrylamide is a nasty neurotoxin. Look at old protein biochemists and their hands all shake from years of making SDS-PAGE gels without gloves.

[–] wildncrazyguy138@fedia.io 4 points 3 hours ago

Well dang. The cape cod dark russets are my favorite.

[–] DrBob@lemmy.ca 33 points 6 hours ago

So does anything that's browned when cooking.

[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 9 points 5 hours ago

Acrylamide is also a persistent neurotoxin, meaning that it can't be flushed out of your body and any acrylamide that you collect in your body will just continue to collect

[–] burgersc12@mander.xyz 34 points 7 hours ago

Its an assumed carcinogen as far as I can tell. There are no studies showing it causing cancer in humans, but they presume it might be a carcinogen due to the effect on rodents.

However, a large number of epidemiologic studies... in humans have found no consistent evidence that dietary acrylamide exposure is associated with the risk of any type of cancer Source

[–] njaard@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago

Known to the State of California.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 24 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Til just about anything can be linked to an increase of cancer.

[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 hours ago

Being alive probably poses the greatest risk.

[–] Broadfern@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago

Buying anything from California will also teach you this.

(They put cancer warning stickers on everything, for anyone not familiar)

[–] Asafum@feddit.nl 6 points 5 hours ago

That's ok, I'll just eat lead paint chips as well and the two of them can fight each other.

That is how it works right?