Scientists have advanced in their fight against carcinogens in one of our favorite snacks, potato chips, in a historic step for food safety and snack enthusiasts worldwide. Globally, they have opened the door to healthier fried foods by ‘flicking the switch’ on a gene that produces acrylamide, a known carcinogen, in cold-stored potatoes.
Jiming Jiang, a Research Foundation Professor at Michigan State University (MSU), said, “This discovery represents a significant advancement in our understanding of potato development and its implications for food quality and health.” Together with colleague David Douches, his invention has the potential to completely transform how we store and eat potatoes, especially in their most popular form—the golden, crispy chip.
With $240 million in revenue each year, the US potato industry is a thriving market. Potatoes are frequently kept in cold storage conditions to satisfy year-round demand, which regrettably causes a natural process in the tubers that turns starches into sugars. In addition to making the potato darker when cooked, this process—known as cold-induced sweetening, or CIS—raises the amounts of acrylamide, a chemical that has been linked to cancer.
The potato vacuolar invertase gene, or VInv, is the gene that controls this temperature-driven sugar conversion, according to research by Jiang and Douches of MSU. By blocking this gene, potatoes can be kept cold without running the risk of developing acrylamide while cooking. Because there is no longer a need for actions to lower the sugar content of cold-stored tubers, producers may save time and money in addition to improving consumer health.
“We’ve identified the specific gene responsible for CIS and, more importantly, we’ve uncovered the regulatory element that switches it on under cold temperatures,” Jiang said. Wide-ranging ramifications of this research point to a time when potatoes will be able to naturally withstand the sweetening process, negating the need for expensive and flavor-changing methods currently employed to lower sugar level.
The MSU crew isn’t content to stop at the lab doors. Breeding methods to create these ‘healthier’ potatoes are now being developed. “All our facilities are on campus so the research work can be done efficiently,” Douches, who is in charge of MSU’s genetics and breeding program for potatoes, stated. Their partnership has paved the way for the development of cold-resistant potato cultivars through targeted genetic alteration.
The work is more than just a scholarly endeavor; it was published in the journal The Plant Cell. It raises the bar for global food health regulations and has practical ramifications for the $250 billion savory snack market. It is expected that around 300 million Americans will eat potato chips this year, therefore the significance of this study cannot be understated.
This discovery has more applications than just potato chips. Acrylamide is an issue in many high-temperature-processed starchy foods, and the discovery at MSU may have wider ramifications for food safety in general.
Jiang went on to say, “Our next steps involve using this knowledge to create CIS-resistant potato lines through gene editing or other breeding techniques in Dr. Douches’ greenhouses,” demonstrating how far along the process of going from lab to greenhouse to chip bag is.
More than merely a scientific curiosity, Jiang and Douches’ work at MSU is a step toward a time when our favorite foods will be safer in addition to being delectable. This development “has the potential to affect every single bag of potato chips around the world,” according to Jiang, making it a significant turning point for the potato business as well as consumers.
