Verification of the findings of acrylamide in heated foods

We report here the first confirmation of the recent Swedish findings of acrylamide in heated foods. The verification exercise used an LC-MS\MS method developed for the purpose as well as an established GC-MS method for acrylamide analysis. LC-MS\MS was suitable for the direct determination of acrylamide in aqueous extracts of foods by isotope dilution mass spectrometry (IDMS) using triply deuterated acrylamide. Some food matrices were not suited to the new method and mixed-mode solid-phase extraction (SPE) was used to clean these extracts. The foods tested included UK versions of some of the key food groups analysed in Sweden. Also tested were some foods heated under home-cooking conditions. There was good agreement between the LC-MS/MS results and the GC-MS results and the levels of acrylamide found here were similar to those reported for the corresponding foods analysed in the Swedish study. The analyses confirmed that acrylamide is absent from, the raw or boiled foods but present at significant levels in fried, grilled, baked and toasted foods. The highest result was 12000 mug kg(-1) acrylamide in overcooked oil-fried chips.