How bad is it to eat burnt food?
Whether your oven is completely refusing to cooperate or your pan (and your cooking skills) are letting you down, your food can easily get seriously burnt. And there you are. With your blackened steak or coal-like potatoes. What now? Throw it away? Or secretly eat it anyway? You may be leaning toward the latter. Because: it would be a shame to throw it away. But how bad is it to eat burnt food?
When you fry your sausages, they change from bright pink to light brown. That’s good, because it ensures that your sausage cooks through. Bacteria that could otherwise make you sick are killed. The sausage also gets more flavor. It becomes wonderfully juicy and gets a slightly crunchy edge. This happens because of the Maillard reaction. But the change from pink to black can happen quickly. If your heat is too high and you take your eyes off your sausage for a moment, it turns into a black brick.
Carbon monoxide
So what exactly happens when your sausage (or any other edible product) burns? It won’t surprise you, but your food is exposed to too much heat. The heat from your oven or pan can no longer be properly absorbed and processed by your food. Among other things, a considerable amount of carbon monoxide is produced that remains stuck to the food. Together with even more unhealthy substances, this forms a black layer. We also know such a black layer as soot.
Fry them brown—er, golden yellow
Soot contains various substances that are not good for our health. A large part of soot consists of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. These in turn contain benzo[a]pyrene: a substance also found in cigarette smoke. Well, I probably don’t need to give you a speech about how that’s not exactly good for you. Another substance found in soot is acrylamide. This can form when starchy products—such as potatoes—are heated to more than 120°C. Should you panic because you stand behind the deep fryer every week? No, the amount is too low for that. But you’re better off leaving black fries on the plate. And: golden yellow is always better than brown!
Be careful
Both PAHs and acrylamide are carcinogenic. You especially need to be careful if you ingest too much of these substances. RADAR spoke to a spokesperson for Het Voedingscentrum, who says that it is actually impossible to avoid ingesting small amounts of PAHs. But you can limit your intake. Don’t cook or fry in oil that’s too hot, and always turn on your extractor hood while cooking. Do you still see blackened spots appearing on your food? Cut them away as thoroughly as possible. Oh, and even though it’s great fun: don’t stand too close to the barbecue. You can also inhale the harmful substances.
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