Acrylamide is a compound classified in Group 2A, which means "probably carcinogenic to humans," by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Thus the press release announcing the presence of acrylamide in fried and oven-cooked foods by the University of Stockholm and the National Food Administration of Sweden in April 2002 caused worldwide concern for human health. After this report, analyses of acrylamide in foods were urgently performed in many countries. Our paper described modified methods of LC-MS/MS and GC-MS analyses previously reported by other research groups, which are useful for determination of acrylamide in a wide range of processed foods. We showed that analytical values obtained by the two methods highly correlate for various processed food samples. This would be one of the main reasons why our paper has been cited by food chemists involved in acrylamide analysis. Within these two years, abundant data on acrylamide content in foods have been reported from Western countries while the data on Asian foods are still scarce. Our paper was published as the first report of acrylamide in Japanese food in an international journal and cited as representative of data on Asian foods. We think this is another reason for the citations.

As described above, our report would be helpful to establish methods of acrylamide analysis in food samples. In addition, our data of acrylamide in Japanese foods are useful for the estimation of exposure of Asian people to acrylamide.

Our institute, the National Food Research Institute, is implementing wide-range research projects on food science and technology as one of Japan’s main public research institutions. The Incorporated Administrative Agency is supported mostly by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. The mission of the Institute is to provide Japanese society with a healthy and enriched life and a secure supply of safe food through conducting research. After the press release on the presence of acrylamide in common-processed foods by the University of Stockholm and the National Food Administration of Sweden in April 2002, our institute organized a cross-divisional working group for this issue and started the analysis of acrylamide in processed foods in the Japanese market. We are now expanding the research to examine the effects of the storage conditions of potato tubers on acrylamide formation in potato chips during frying.