Acrylamide in coffee: formation and possible mitigation strategies - a review

It is widely known that acrylamide, present in some different heat-treated foods, is an important toxic compound to humans. Coffee beverage is one of the most important sources of acrylamide, because the raw bean contains the reaction substrates and it is processed at very high temperature during roasting. Due to its high consumption all over the world, it is necessary to find applicable solutions to decrease the concentration of this undesired Maillard reaction product. The present review summarizes the advance made in understanding the acrylamide formation and describes the potential acrylamide reduction strategies along all coffee production steps, from raw material to coffee brew preparation with a dominant focus on roasting stage. Currently, it is quite established that the selection of the highest quality Arabica green coffee variety, high roasting thermal input and shortest brewing techniques lead to low final acrylamide levels. There are also few innovative interventions proposed for acrylamide control in coffee such as enzymatic treatments of raw material, vacuum or steam roasting, roasted beans supercritical fluid extraction, final beverage treatments like yeast fermentation and amino acids/additive additions. However, for these strategies the impact on the desired sensorial and nutritional coffee brew properties must be evaluated and some proposed procedures are still difficult to be applied at real industrial scale. Furthermore, in-depth studies are needed in order to find appropriate and practical solutions for acrylamide mitigation in coffee with a holistic risk/benefit approach.