Guardian Unlimited: How worried should we be? Food additives main culprit in getting a cancer related disease

Guardian Unlimited"How worried should we be? Food additives main culprit in getting a cancer related disease.

Dr Vyvyan Howard, leading expert in foetal toxicology at Liverpool University and a member of the government's advisory committee on pesticides, said there was an overarching argument for reducing exposure to carcinogens as far as possible. "You have an increasing cancer incidence in the western world - up 50% in the UK since the 1970s. When I was born in 1946 there was a one in four lifetime risk of getting cancer, now it's one in three. For American males it is nearly one in two. Dr Howard points out that other carcinogens in food such as acrylamide present a very high risk. Acrylamide is a chemical produced in foods high in starch that have been cooked or processed at high temperatures, such as chips, breads, crackers, crisps and cereals. "It's nasty stuff, there's more of it and it's in more foods."