Effects of some cations on the formation of acrylamide and furfurals in glucose-asparagine model system

A recent patent application and some other studies showed that there is a relation between acrylamide formation and cations. In fact, to date, there is no concrete evidence on the formation or elimination of some compounds in foods and current hypotheses are based only on observations in model systems. To find that this is a logical explanation, we conducted a series of experiments, to show (i) the formation and the elimination of acrylamide with the addition of some cations, and (ii) the formation of hydroxymethylfurfural and furfural in a glucose-asparagine model system. The results indicated that the presence of cations reduced acrylamide formation, but increased hydroxymethylfurfural and furfural formation during heating. There was strong evidence that the cations effectively prevented the formation of Schiff base, which is the key intermediate leading to acrylamide, and mainly changed the reaction path toward the dehydration of glucose leading to hydroxymethylfurfural and furfural.