Tag Archives: nuts

Feb21

Aflatoxin Anyone?

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Hey guys, here’s a much needed …

Toxic Tip!

Keep grains, nuts, and cereal in a cool and dry place. Widespread mold, known as Aspergillus flavus, can grow in many grains, nuts, and cereals–especially in warm and damp conditions. This mold produces a toxin known as aflatoxin before and after harvest. Thankfully, you need to ingest high concentrations of this toxin to get aflatoxin poisoning. However, this poisoning has been linked to causing liver damage and tumors. It’s the most potent natural carcinogen because it intercalates into DNA. In addition, this toxin is highly heat stable and low doses of it over many years may lead to cancer. Eeeek … we have to be careful peanut butter lovers!

That’s it for today!

Photo Credit: Flickr user mrsdkrebs

Photo Credit: Flickr user mrsdkrebs

And remember … eat naturally colorfully! 

May29

Can I Get Another Side of Acrylamide?

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First off, I hope everyone enjoyed their three-day weekend!!!

But now it’s back to school and back to work!

So, let’s get down to business. 

In an earlier post, I told you all about the food processing toxin, acrylamide, in “Large Fries with a Side of Acrylamide.“

(Please click on the link above (orange) if you haven’t read it yet, it’s a very interesting topic. Plus, the rest of this post will make more sense after you have a little more background knowledge on acrylamide!).

I have some very riveting little facts to add.

Acrylamide is most commonly found in heat-treated foods rich in carbohydrates, like potatoes, but I recently learned it is also found in heat-treated nuts! So, although raw almonds may have many great benefits, which I will touch on in a later post, roasted almonds contain acrylamide! This may sound shocking, at least for me it was, I didn’t know roasted almonds had traces of a listed Prop 65 chemical … but they do!

So, once again, if you absolutely love roasted almonds, MODERATION is key!!!!

Also, to add to your ever growing acrylamide knowledge, I posted a table, from one of my food toxicology lectures, that seems to complement this post perfectly! The table below displays the amount of acrylamide in a specific serving for different food products! Take a look!!! It’s super interesting.

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