Glycidol may help explain why people who eat fried foods get more cancer.
“The main purpose of frying is to produce food that is acceptable to consumers. However, not all acceptable food is safe.” Food chemists were very interested in the newly discovered toxic substances produced by frying.
We have been refining vegetable oil for over a century, but recently discovered that this can produce compounds such as 3-MCPD and, even worse, glycidol. 3-MCPD is considered a nongenotoxic carcinogen with daily tolerance, while glycidol is a known genotoxic carcinogen, meaning it can cause cancer by directly damaging our DNA, as I discuss in my video. Carcinogen Glycidol in cooking oil.
If a compound does not directly damage DNA, it is thought to act through a restriction signaling mechanism; a level called a no-effect level may exist, a level below which it will not be harmful. But if a compound damages DNA, it is generally thought to follow a “non-limiting pathway…and no ‘safe intake level’ can be found,” because it may only take a DNA mutation to start the march toward cancer. Therefore, such substances are not allowed to be deliberately added to food. For so-called unavoidable pollution, the principle of “ALARA” is followed, which means that the standard should be as low as possible or as little as possible. As glycidol seems to be, we should try to avoid it as much as possible.
A lifetime cancer risk of 1 in 100,000 is “often used as a socially acceptable risk.” Based on data from lab animals, this can be exceeded if a person weighing about 150 pounds eats less than a microgram per day. However, due to the use of refined oils in many food products, typical exposure to glycidol may be more than 50 micrograms. And in children, the intake level may exceed the acceptable cancer risk by 200 times.
So, do people who eat a lot of fried food get cancer? It is said that there is strong evidence that there may be a higher risk of chronic disease among regular consumers of fried foods, but that speaks volumes for cardiovascular health. For example, in a study of more than 100,000 women, frequent fried foods, especially fried chicken and fried fish, were associated with a higher risk of death from causes, which means that such consumers live, on average, a very short life. But that was mostly due to cardiovascular deaths, while fried foods were generally unrelated to cancer deaths. However, in men, higher fried foods were associated with a 35% increased risk of prostate cancer. Therefore, perhaps men with an increased risk of prostate cancer should, as a precautionary measure, limit their fried foods.
These refined oils are also used in infant formula, which presents a problem for babies who cannot be breastfed. Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment concluded that “infants fed specially prepared industrial milk can consume dangerous levels of glycidol.” It should be noted that US formulas contain levels of glycidol contamination similar to those found in Europe—another reason why breast milk is so good. Meanwhile, there are calls for manufacturers of these products to do everything they can to reduce the levels to very low levels.
But, apparently, the industry has not found a way to refine vegetable oil without creating these types of products, “while maintaining the quality of the refined product.” So it was concluded that this problem has no easy solutions, but I disagree. We can choose to avoid using oil and fried food.
Doctor’s Note
I previously talked about 3-MCPD at Side Effects of 3-MCPD in Bragg’s Liquid Aminos again 3-MCPD in refined cooking oil.
There is no substitute for human breast milk. Adoptive families or those using foster care may want to look for a nearby milk bank.
