Potato Chips have Carcinogens?!?!?

I was somewhat aware that ingesting foods cooked under high temperature can have carcinogenic effects, but didn't realize potato chips were such bad offenders. WTF?!?!
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/08/02/ch ... pstoryview

Acrylamide was not detected until 2002. This makes me skeptical about the amount of cancer potato chips are actually responsible for.

And I'm not sanguine about future of potato chips and french fries. If they're both fattening and potentially carcinogenic, no matter how slightly, some prohibitionist food nanny is sure to want to ban them. I'm surprised restaurants haven't been forbidden to serve charred meat already.

"Everybody's trying to figure out how to lower levels (of acrylamide) without significantly, adversely affecting taste," said Michele Corish, an attorney for Lance, which produces Cape Cod chips.

Corish said the modified snacks will be available nationwide. Messages left with the other three companies were not immediately returned Friday night.

The attorney general's office said the levels of acrylamide in most Cape Cod chips are already near the compliance level as defined by the settlement. However, Brown said Cape Cod Robust Russets contain 25 times the acceptable amount.

Corish said "Robust Russets" chips are no longer being sold.

Jay K wrote:I was somewhat aware that ingesting foods cooked under high temperature can have carcinogenic effects, but didn't realize potato chips were such bad offenders. WTF?!?!
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/08/02/ch ... pstoryview

The amount of potato chips you would have to ingest in order to receive the minimum dose of Acrylamide that has been experimentally shown to cause an increase in cancer rates in animal tests would be about 60 pounds per day every day. Just another lawsuit brought to you by politicians who are scientifically illiterate. Same thing with the HCA scare going on now about grilled foods. The experimental animals were given doses of HCA that are several orders of magnitude higher than anyone could possibly ingest by eating grilled meats.