Are You Certain You Wanna Eat Chips?
Constance Tracy-Tayler, N.D., C.N.C.
Stairway to Health

Acrylamide, a cancer causing carcinogen, is obviously a danger to man's health and well-being.  Acrylamide can be a result of preparing grains, in fact starchy foods at high temperatures.

Potato Chips, many breakfast cereals, cookies and crackers can be a fast track to illness, dis/ease and eventually, even death.  High levels of acrylamide were first reported in 2002.  Being a new discovery, not much is known about just how acrylamide forms, effects people, our pets and the
environment.  Even less is known about what we can do about it except avoid anything that could contain this type of poison.

So new to our environmental knowledge banks that no manufacturers are providing information about levels of acrylamide in their particular foods.  As usual, FDA information is scant and more than 2 years old, so depending upon their expertise and interest, it may take a generation, even longer, if ever to develop accurate information.

Lab animals used for experimental purposes, like rats and mice have been shown to develop cancer when fed acrylamide containing foods.  The federal limit for acrylamide, even in drinking water is .5 parts per billion (ppb).  This equates to  .12 mg in an 8 ounce glass of water.  But get this, six-ounces of French fries have been shown to contain about 60 mg of acrylamide.

There is no argument acrylamide, at least at some level, causes cancer. But nobody seems to know just what levels of the chemical represents a dangerous dose AND does it accumulate no matter how small the dose?  With this in
mind, is there any excuse for us to eat plastic wrapped prepared non-foods, most especially starches that contain acrylamide at all, if we want to keep our bodies as clean as possible to avoid but another cancer causing modern
convenience?

Avoiding foods that contain little, no or minus food value is more than likely the answer!  Is there really any reason why, when we order food out, that the restaurant cannot substitute "live" food for chips and fries?

There are those organizations that have begun action to request investigations into these non-foods.  As a matter of fact, California-based Environmental Law Foundation has recently filed inquiries with California's Attorney General against potato chip manufacturers.  Here are a few that
have been listed:

    *      Kettle Chips maker Kettle Foods, Inc.
    *      Pringles maker Proctor & Gamble Co.
    *      Cape Cod Potato Chip parent Lance Inc.
    *      Lay's Potato chip maker PepsiCo Inc.

This would eventually necessitate the manufacturers label their product, giving warnings to potential purchasers of the dangers of the acrylamide in their product lines.

Possibly, this time the FDA should openly and honestly for once review the information developed by the folks at Environmental Law Foundation on the following:

    *      Cape Cod Robust Russet:  910 times
    *      Kettle Chips (lightly salted): 505 times
    *      Kettle Chips (honey dijon): 495 times
    *      Pringles Snack Stacks (pizza flavored): 170 times
    *      Lays Baked:  150 times

Then, enforce labeling laws relating to this type of product.  Unlike their actions related to genetically modified organisms in our food.  AND how much
of these foods are genetically modified as well as laced with poison in the form of acrylamide?

Bibliography:  Dr. Joseph Mercola newsletter, San Francisco Chronicle,
January 3, 2007 and Yahoo News

Constance Tracy-Tayler, N.D., C.N.C., Radio Broadcaster and Clinical Nutritionist airs a daily program, Stairway to Health on radio stations throughout America