Isaac Williams Ofosu
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana
Title: Acrylamide content in alkalized roasted cocoa beans based on K2CO3
Biography
Biography: Isaac Williams Ofosu
Abstract
The Dutching process of cocoa mass production ensures consistency of its brown color, flavor and dispersability. However, acrylamide, a known probable carcinogen which is one of known by-products of browning reactions, is linked to the strength of alkalis used in the Dutching process. This study used Response Surface D-optimal, 20 experimental runs to determine acrylamide content of beans after using treatment factors; temperature (110-160oC), time (20-50 min) and K2CO3 (10-70% w/v). Subsequently, the alkalized cocoa masses were treated to obtain extracts containing acrylamide using QuEChERS method. The concentrations of the acrylamide were determined using HPLC after which the data was processed by fitting a cubic process order followed by diagnostics to remove outliers. The results yielded optimized process conditions of treatment to yield low acrylamide content, which was later validated to be 7.7×10-2 mg/g, at alkali concentration of 29.17% and roasting temperature - time system of 110oC and 20 min respectively. Though the validated acrylamide content was relatively lower than what has been reported in some European markets, it was found to be extremely high in other markets. This suggests that the application of K2CO3 could hold promise of lowering acrylamide concentrations. However, after exposure studies, the validated acrylamide yielded a probable risk of ‘4 in 1000’ adults and ‘2 in 100’ young children consumers of chocolate products which were highly unacceptable relative to the de minimis (‘1 in 1,000,000’). Thus, based on the de minimis risk, further control measures must be sought to produce safer alkalized cocoa masse.