Skip the Chips!

You know what a stickler I am when it comes to processed foods – I don’t like them and am dead set against anyone consuming them. Here’s the latest fodder for why I take the stand I do.

Before I get to the latest justification for not eating processed foods, what if I told you that what you were about to eat contains an ingredient used to make your kids’ glue, your wife’s makeup and your printer’s paper? Or that the ingredients in those golden brown potato chips you’re snacking on, some of the ingredients are used to build your city’s transportation routes. You’d probably reconsider eating it, right? Well, if you’re a regular consumer of potato chips, that’s exactly what you’re putting into your body every day. What’s more, if you’re a woman, this ingredient may have you on the fast track to ovarian or endometrial cancer.

The ingredient to which I’m referring is called acrylamide, and while makers of potato chips, French fries and other fried or processed foods don’t add acrylamide to their products as an ingredient, it’s nonetheless produced and formed in the food during the cooking process. In fact, the more cooked a potato chip or French fry is (fried, grilled, roasted, whatever the cooking process specifically entails), the more acrylamide it contains. And according to research from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, women that regularly consume these kinds of foods are at an elevated risk of ovarian or endometrial cancer compared to those who eat them sparingly.

Researchers discovered this after looking over the cancer rates among 62,000 women 11 years after they had completed a dietary questionnaire that asked what kinds of foods they ate with some regularity. What they found was that those women who said they ate processed foods daily – like potato chips, for instance – were twice as likely to have ovarian or endometrial cancer compared to those who ate foods containing acrylamide sparingly. What amount was too much? The researchers estimate that a diet containing at least 40 micrograms of acrylamide was enough to put someone in the “twice the risk” category for endometrial or ovarian cancer. Forty micrograms is roughly one – one! – serving of potato chips. Their findings are published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology.

According to the American Cancer Society, endometrial and ovarian cancers rank fourth and fifth, respectively, in cancer deaths among women. As we all know, the endometrium is the lining of a woman’s uterus, while the ovaries produce a woman’s ovas and the hormones estrogen and progesterone. Both play a vital role in a woman’s reproductive system.

If nothing else, this is a scathing indictment regarding the dangers of consuming processed foods. But it’s not something we can blame the processed food companies for. If you fry or overcook your own carbohydrate-laden snacks, you’re at just as much a risk as those who get their “goodies” out of the bag.

While the researchers say less than 40 micrograms a day of acrylamide is a safe bet, I can think of an even safer bet when it comes to avoiding these cancers: don’t eat them at all. Sure they taste good, but it’s not a taste worth risking your reproductive health for – not to mention your life.