Abstract/Summary

Vegetable chips—beets, sweet potatoes, carrots, and parsnips fried like potato chips and sold separately or as a mixture—are an increasingly popular snack. Little data currently exists on acrylamide levels in these products, and there is sparse information on the free amino acid composition of these four vegetables, with asparagine, a precursor of acrylamide, being of interest. Acrylamide concentrations in 35 vegetable chip samples and free amino acids in two to three samples of each of the four vegetables were measured. Of the chip samples, nearly 70% (24 samples) contained levels of acrylamide above the European Commission’s benchmark value of 750 µg/kg for potato chips. In comparison, from 2012 to 2016, approximately 10% of potato chip samples exceeded this value. The food industry has reduced the acrylamide content of potato chips by using cultivars developed specifically for chip manufacturing. Because the vegetable chip market is still significantly smaller than the potato chip market, equivalent cultivar development has not yet occurred. Hence, it is more likely for vegetable chips to be high in acrylamide than potato chips.