Dr. Joe Schwarcz

I think, as a general rule, the population, certainly in the Western world, is consuming too much sugar.

When you consider that a can of soft drink can contain 40 grams of sugar, which is actually more than the amount of added sugar that we should be eating during a day.

Well, it probably is true if you're going to feed your crumbs from burnt toast to mice or to rats in huge amounts, they may indeed develop cancer.

Because whenever you burn wheat, which contains glucose and contains an amino acid called asparagine, these two will react together and form acrylamide.

We call acrylamide a carcinogen.

Now, a lot of people are confused by that term, but scientifically, it just means that it is a chemical that can cause cancer without taking into account under what conditions or in what amount.

In the case of acrylamide, that is true.

because when you feed huge doses to test animals, you can trigger cancer.

But that is a long way from saying that eating burnt toast will cause cancer in humans.

The story, of course, becomes much more complicated because obviously the cornerstone of toxicology is that only the dose makes the poison.

So it's a question of how much one would eat.

And

If one would make a diet of burnt toast, you know, with every meal, there might be an issue there, especially if you combine it with burnt marshmallows or a steak that has been grilled to the degree that it's black on the outside.

Yeah, then we're looking at a possible risk to health.

But when it is consumed in reasonable amounts in moderation, that is a completely different story.

That's right.

Less is better because acrylamide is indeed a recognized carcinogen, albeit it has only been shown to cause cancer in test animals at high doses.

But nevertheless, we want to limit our intake of anything.

that is potentially carcinogenic.

So indeed, yes, we should be concerned about overconsumption of anything that has burned.