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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.