1 International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Bujumbura, Burundi
2 Food Technology Department, Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Technology, Silpakorn University, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand
Fast food processing, the palatable taste of fried food, and considerable economic benefit make deep-fat frying one of the most popular cooking methods in the household kitchen, fastfood restaurant, street-food vendors, and industries. The sale of pre-cooked and ready-to-eat products such as chicken nugget, French fries, and potato chips, all of which are prepared by deep-frying process has dramatically increased in the western world and is rapidly expanding throughout the developing countries.
Frying involves submerging food in extremely hot oil (~160-180 °C) until it reaches a safe minimum internal temperature. When the food is deep-fried properly, it is endowed with an attractive flavor, golden-brown pellicle (a skin or membrane on the surface of meat, fish, or poultry, which allow smoke to better adhere to the surface during the smoking process), and crisp texture. While deep-frying can give delicious results, many complex chemical reactions also occur in both the fried material and frying oil. Due to a high uptake of oil in deep-fried food, several studies have shown that consuming this product can be harmful to health as it can lead to coronary heart disease, diabetes, or hypertension. Moreover, a high accumulation of acrylamide – a chemical that can form in some foods during high-temperature cooking processes – in deep-fried food, especially in starchy-rich foods containing asparagine (amino acid) and reducing sugars, can potentially cause degenerative nerve changes via chronic oral intake (Parzefall, 2008), and introduce possible carcinogens to humans, classified in Group 2A by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) (Hsu et al., 2016).
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