Occurrence and Dietary Exposure to Acrylamide from Foods Consumed within and outside Main Meals in Singapore

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of 'snackification' in Singaporean diets, leading to increased dietary acrylamide exposure. Acrylamide concentrations in commonly consumed foods within and outside the main meals were measured using liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). High acrylamide concentrations were detected in vegetables cooked at high temperatures (ranging from 0.5 to 478.4 µg/kg) and potato-based crackers and chips (ranging from 81.8 to 2095.8 µg/kg). The estimated total dietary exposure for the Singapore population was 0.165 µg/kg bw/day for general consumers and 0.392 µg/kg bw/day for high consumers (95th percentile). The acrylamide exposure from outside main meals was nearly equivalent to that from within the main meals. The calculated margins of exposure (MOE) were below 10,000, indicating potential human health concern. These findings highlight the need for industry practices and consumer advisories to reduce acrylamide exposure from foods consumed both within and outside main meals.

Keywords: LC-MS/MS; MOE; Singapore; acrylamide; dietary exposure; foods; risk assessment; snack.

Figure 1

The box-and-whisker plots of different types of vegetables where their acrylamide concentrations and cooking methods are represented by a circle and respective colours. The interquartile ranges (IQR) were illustrated by the boxes where they were bounded by the lower quartile (Q1) (i.e., 25th percentile of data) and the upper quartile (Q3) (i.e., 75th percentile of data). The minimum (i.e., Q1 − 1.5 × IQR) and maximum (i.e., Q1 + 1.5 × IQR) values were represented by the whisker lines. Outliers were represented by values found outside of the box-and-whisker plots.