http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnist...1190225,00.html

They can seriously damage your health, but don't want to advertise the fact

John Sutherland
Monday April 12, 2004
The Guardian

Most of us might think acrylamide was the shiny stuff you cover cheap sofas with. Nor do most people (even in California, where it originated) know exactly what Prop 65 is. The collision of the two, however, will make headlines over the next couple of months. It may even change our eating habits.
Proposition 65 (put into law by popular vote, two decades ago) mandates that citizens in California must be informed, by public and legible notice, of substances "known to the state to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm".

Every law-abiding gasoline pump in California has a sign instructing the customer not to breathe the carcinogenic fumes, and a protective cap over the nozzle to prevent accidental inhalation (and costly lawsuits). It's good advice. Britons die every year because they don't know what every Californian driver is forced to know - keep your head averted as you fill her up. California beer cans have so many health warnings that there is barely room for the brand name. Nail varnish? Toilet cleaner? The shiny stuff they cover sofas with? Don't ask.

We (or, at least, those of us with a certain discrete ailment) have reason to be grateful to Prop 65's distant author (David Roe by name). Rather than put a health warning on their efficacious product in California, the makers of Preparation H found a way of removing (worldwide) the mercury the pile ointment used to contain. Are you sitting comfortably? You should be.

A couple of years ago Swedish scientists discovered that acrylamide is dangerous. It's a "natural" byproduct of high-temperature cooking. Mega-doses of the stuff produces cancer in rats. The World Health Organisation confirms that the risk to humans is real. Acrylamide is found throughout the food chain and there are tiny amounts in tap water (among its other unlovely associations, the chemical used to purify sewage so we can drink it without puking). The highest concentrations are in what America calls fries and we call chips. Not enough to kill rats, but enough to cause concern.

Both McDonald's and Burger King have patented techniques of super-hot frying which leave the fry dry. Unlike its soggy and messy UK equivalent, you don't have to wash after eating them. The more heat, the more acrylamide. The more acrymalide, the more possibility of cancer.

Lawyers, scenting rich toxic damage claims, have filed suit against Ronald and the Home of the Whopper. They must "respond" by July. Unsurprisingly, they are reluctant to post notices of the "French Fry: Eat it and Die" kind. There has been enough misery for the fast food industry lately - what with Atkins, CJD and the obesity epidemic.

The history of the deep-fried potato wedge is interestingly different in the English-speaking world. They are called french fries in the US because American soldiers first came across them serving in the first world war. On their return, some enterprising vets set up restaurants. The rest is culinary history.

Given its origins, the french fry has always had a classy aura in the US - a kind of "How are you gonna keep them down on the farm, after they've seen Paree" chic. In England it's different. For us the potato is identified with prole grub. Like oats in Scotland, spuds were what cattle and foreign peasants ate. If you were unlucky enough to be in the army or prison, it was, as Arnold Wesker's play put it, "chips with everything". As soon as you had a few bob jingling in your pocket it was on to better things. Like prawn cocktails.

Americans nowadays eat on average some 30lbs of fries a year and, with that sackfull of junk food, 35 micrograms of acrylamide a day - many hundreds of times what the WHO judges to be safe. We're not far behind. Well, what do you expect for your 99p - to live forever?