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'Cooked fats' linked to cancers

Women who eat crisps or chips every day may double their chances of ovarian or

womb cancer, say scientists.

The fears surround acrylamides, chemicals produced when you fry, grill or roast

a wide range of foods.

Dutch researchers quizzed 120,000 people on their eating habits, and found that

women who ate more acrylamide appeared more at risk.

UK experts say other factors could be to blame, and urged women there was not

need to panic.

General advice, resulting from this project, is to avoid overcooking when

baking, frying or toasting carbohydrate-rich foods

EU spokesman

Laboratory tests highlighted as a possible danger five years ago, but the

University of Maastricht study, published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology,

Biomarkers and Prevention, is the first to find a link between acrylamides in

the diet and cancer risk.

Food which has been coloured or burned by cooking is far more likely to contain

acrylamides.

Food experts say it is virtually impossible to eliminate them from our diets

altogether.

The Dutch study followed the 120,000 volunteers - 62,000 of whom were women -

for 11 years after their initial questionnaire, during which time 327 of them

developed endometrial (womb) cancer, and 300 developed ovarian cancer.

Analysis of these findings suggested that those who ate 40 micrograms of

acrylamide a day - equivalent to half a pack of biscuits, a portion of chips or

a single packet of crisps - were twice as likely to fall prey to these cancers

compared with those who ate much less acrylamide.

Despite the size of the study, the researchers said that the results needed to

be confirmed by other research.

Golden brown

In the UK, there are approximately 6,400 cases of womb cancer, and 7,000 cases

of ovarian cancer a year.

Women shouldn't be unduly worried by this news

Lesley Walker

Cancer Research UK

A spokesman for the Food Standards Agency urged people to try a balanced diet

with plenty of fruit and vegetables.

"This new study supports our current advice, which already assumes that

acrylamide has the potential to be a human carcinogen.

"Since acrylamide forms naturally in a wide variety of cooked foods, it is not

possible to have a healthy, balanced diet that avoids it."

Experts at the EU said that food should not be overcooked.

An EU spokesman said: "General advice, resulting from this project, is to avoid

overcooking when baking, frying or toasting carbohydrate-rich foods.

"French fries and roast potatoes should be cooked to a golden yellow rather

than golden brown colour."

However, Dr Lesley Walker, from Cancer Research UK said that it was hard to be

sure that the extra cancers were due to just acrylamides, rather than some

other unhealthy component of the women's diets.

"Women shouldn't be unduly worried by this news. It's not easy to separate out

one component of the diet from all the others when studying the complex diets

of ordinary people."

The food industry says it has made efforts to reduce the acrylamides within

processed foods in recent years.

A study published in 2005 found no evidence that acrylamide increased the risk

of breast cancer.