Exactly what happens to your body when you eat heavily burnt food as cancer researcher warns against consuming
Burning or charring food can sometimes have a surprisingly positive impact on the taste, but one cancer researcher reveals the negative impact that blackened food can have on your body, warning against consumption going forward.
This is due to the compounds that are formed when food is overcooked or burned, with the Maillard reaction – a process where natural sugars react with amino acid to often enhance flavor – producing something called acrylamine.
As per Everhope Oncology, research on animals has revealed that acrylamide has the potential to cause cancer, as it's classed as a Group 2A carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), but the doses tested on animals are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of times higher than what humans would be exposed to.
Should you avoid eating burned food?
That still leaves it technically a cancer risk, although it would require unusually high consumption to have any noticeable impact relating to the specific process of burning itself, with some of the foods you'd typically find on the receiving end of a char potentially more dangerous on their own.
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Regardless of this, cancer scientist and social media influencer Sasha Bondarenko shared her reluctance to eat any burned or charred foods due to the cancer risk and the damage it can cause to your DNA.
Sasha explained why burned foods – especially meat – are one of five types of grub that she simply won't touch:
"When meat is cooked at very high temperatures, grilled until black, or pan-fried aggressively, it can form compounds that damage DNA," the cancer researcher illustrated.
"One burned steak will not ruin your health, but regularly exposing your cells to that for years is not something I would normalize," she concluded.
What other foods should you avoid eating?
Charred or burned meat isn't the only thing that Sasha suggests avoiding, as she also stays away from three other types of food for similar health-damaging reasons in the long term.
The first will definitely not surprise you, as she avoid all types of processed and ultra processed meats. These include everything from bacon and sausages to hot dogs and chemically preserved goods, as they have been likened to smoking when it comes to the damage it causes for your body.
Eating just 50 grams of processed meat every day can increase your risk of colorectal cancer by roughly 18%, so that might make you think twice before reaching for something from the deli going forward.
Overly starchy foods like chips, burned toast, and heavily browned potatoes have a similar risk to charred meats, as acrylamide appears as a result of this too and is something you'll want to avoid.
Finally, while it might not be a type of food, Sasha also recommends staying away from alcohol as it's linked to at least seven different types of cancer no matter what form it takes.
While some health studies have suggested that small amounts of alcohol can be positive for your health – in part due to the resveratrol in red wine, for example – this still isn't enough to cancel out the damage caused by ethanol as a whole.