Acrylamides

The central factual reference Aajonus returned to repeatedly was a body of research conducted by a team of full professors at a major Swedish university in cooperation with Sweden's National Food Administration. He described this team variously as comprising 9, 10, 12, or 15 full professors working across approximately 8 to 12 years of laboratory testing and chemical analysis. Despite slight variation in how he described the team size and study duration across different talks, the core findings he reported were consistent.

The researchers examined cancerous tissue and found that acrylamides were the predominant chemical constituent. Depending on the version Aajonus gave, he described the acrylamide concentration in tumor tissue as comprising 40 to 60% of the total constituents, or in some accounts 60% of cancer cells were saturated with acrylamides, or that 90% of cancer tissue contained heavy concentrations of acrylamides. He used the phrase "tumors were acrylamides, not cancer" to express his reading of their conclusion, meaning the tumor material itself was largely composed of acrylamide accumulation rather than being a distinct biological phenomenon separate from this chemical saturation.

The team then tested foods for acrylamide content and found that the highest concentrations appeared in fried carbohydrate foods, particularly potato chips, french fries, and cereals. On the basis of their findings, they held a press conference and called for the outlawing of potato chips, all types of chips, french fries, donuts, and the majority of breakfast cereals, which they characterized as the most acrylamide-dense foods available. The British Food Standards Agency later confirmed the Swedish findings, establishing that acrylamides cause gene mutations leading to a range of cancers in rats, including breast, uterine, adrenal, and scrotum cancers. The British study found acrylamide levels 1,280 times higher than international safety limits in fried supermarket potatoes, chips, crisps, Ryvita crackers, Kellogg's Rice Crispies, and Pringles.

The Swedish research team went directly to the press rather than routing through their university administration first, which Aajonus described as politically naive. Within a very short time, the multinational food industry, including cereal and chip manufacturers with what Aajonus characterized as multi-trillion dollar revenues, moved on the politicians at the scientists' universities and in the Swedish government. The research was declared improperly conducted, every member of the team lost their tenure, and all of them were demoted from full professorships to teaching positions in secondary schools. Aajonus returned to this outcome consistently as an illustration that scientific truth about food toxicity was not allowed to survive contact with industry economic interests.

Aajonus gave specific numerical ranges for acrylamide concentrations across different cooking methods, and while these figures varied somewhat between talks, they consistently demonstrated the same magnitude of increase with frying.

In a baked or simply cooked carbohydrate food, Aajonus described baseline acrylamide levels ranging from approximately 50 to 200 acrylamides per gram depending on the food and version of the account. One version described starting at 56 acrylamides. Another described ordinary cooked food at around 150 to 200 acrylamides. A baked potato was described as containing approximately 160 acrylamides per gram.

Once that same food was fried in oil, particularly vegetable oil, the acrylamide content increased by factors described as 1,500 times or more in most accounts. A baked potato fried in oil would jump from approximately 160 to somewhere between 1,500 and 2,100 acrylamides per gram. Another version gave figures of 200 acrylamides jumping to 1,800 per gram when boiled in vegetable oils such as safflower oil. One account described potato chips as containing 1,500 times more acrylamides than the potato itself when fried, and another version raised that figure to 15,000 times. Aajonus was explicit that this variability depended on the specific method and type of processing applied.

The Swedish study as Aajonus described it showed that the average potato chip contained up to 25 times more acrylamides than the maximum level permitted in drinking water by the World Health Organization. He characterized that comparison as illustrating how completely regulatory standards around food lagged behind what was known about cooking chemistry.

Aajonus consistently identified the same category of foods as the most acrylamide-dense. The common thread was always the combination of high carbohydrate content with deep frying or extreme processing. The specific foods he named most frequently were:

Potato chips and all other forms of chips, whether made from potato, soy, or any other high-carbohydrate base. The combination of starch and boiling in oil was described as the defining factor, not the specific source ingredient.

French fries, which Aajonus noted the British call chips. These were among the most cited examples and appeared in virtually every discussion of acrylamides.

Donuts, which combine high carbohydrate content with frying in oil and appeared in his descriptions alongside chips and french fries as the worst examples.

Breakfast cereals, which Aajonus described as possibly the most toxic food on the planet when considered alongside their acrylamide content. He pointed out that cereals were the foods Western governments shipped as food aid to impoverished populations in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere, describing the acrylamide levels as 1,500 times what the body could handle, and characterizing this as a form of deliberate poisoning or genocide.

He also mentioned fried popcorn, any fried bread, and any fried high-carbohydrate food. The principle he returned to was that the ratio of carbohydrate in the food subjected to frying determined the magnitude of acrylamide production, meaning that starchier foods produced more acrylamides than lower-carbohydrate foods under identical frying conditions.

He noted that cereals were also problematic even without frying because of how they were processed, and he described his own childhood habit of eating two to three boxes of Sugar Crisp per day as consistent with his subsequent development of cancer.

While acrylamides were primarily discussed in the context of carbohydrate-dense foods, Aajonus also noted that rendered lard or other animal fats subjected to high heat carried acrylamide risk. When asked about the crispy rendered pork fat that some people's mothers cooked with, he confirmed that this was dangerous because it was high in acrylamides. This placed even some animal-derived cooked preparations in the acrylamide category, though the primary danger remained with starchy fried foods. Pasteurized butter, while cooked, was described as a lesser concern in context because it would not solidify in the arteries the way plastic oils did, though it still carried the general risks associated with cooked food.

Aajonus described acrylamides as producing sticky, gummy compounds in the body's fluids and tissues. When the body processed or attempted to handle acrylamides, particularly the pyruvate involved in acrylamide chemistry, the fluids became viscous and adhesive. This stickiness affected blood, neurological fluids, lymphatic fluid, and the glute or gut system. Cells moving through these fluids would adhere to one another, slow down, and fail to function properly. He described neurological misfiring and brain dysfunction as consequences of this stickiness in neural fluid.

Acrylamides and the related advanced glycation end products accumulated in the body over a lifetime and did not clear easily. Aajonus found evidence of this accumulation through iridology, examining and photographing patients' irises and enlarging the images on a screen. He observed that people who were eating cooked starches regularly, even while following the Primal Diet in other respects, were accumulating acrylamides and advanced glycation end products in ways that showed up in iris photography. This observation led him to revise his earlier advice.

He connected acrylamide accumulation with the storage environment that predisposed the body to cancer. High sugar environments in the body created conditions favorable to cancerous states, and cooked carbohydrates added acrylamides and advanced glycation end products on top of that sugar burden. In a person eating cooked carbohydrates alongside cooked fats and cooked proteins, the body was simultaneously contending with lipid peroxides, heterocyclic amines, and acrylamides, which he described as a particularly dangerous combination, using chips and donuts as the clearest example of a food that combined all three classes of cooking toxins in one product.

Aajonus linked acrylamides to a category of neurological waste products that the body needed to address through some form of starch-based processing. He explained that anxiety, erratic adrenaline, and related biochemical stress events produced byproducts that the body could only harness through a starch medium. In early editions of his first book "We Want to Live," he recommended small amounts of cooked starch eaten several times a week with large amounts of raw fat to manage these byproducts.

After seven years of observing patients who followed this recommendation, he found that they were consuming cooked starch daily and in larger quantities than intended, and iris photography revealed accumulating acrylamides and advanced glycation end products in their intestinal tissues. This prompted him to search for an alternative starch source that would serve the neurological buffering function without generating acrylamides.

The solution he developed with the assistance of a friend named Alonzo was a nut formula, combining nuts ground with eggs, honey, and butter. This combination neutralized the phytic acid in the nuts, allowed digestion of the nut starches and proteins, and addressed the neurological byproduct issue without the acrylamide problem that cooked starches created. He recommended eating this preparation approximately once a week rather than daily for most people on the diet, noting that many people on the full Primal Diet did not need even this frequency.

He also described the situation in which he had originally allowed patients a baked potato or half a baked potato with a full stick of butter, on the premise that the fat would bind with the acrylamides and prevent them from storing in the body. Patients took this guidance further than intended, extending it to Italian bread, French bread, and other cooked starches in unlimited amounts, and he observed the resultant accumulation of advanced glycation end products and acrylamides in the intestines even in people who were otherwise following the diet well. This observation led him to eliminate the cooked starch recommendation and replace it entirely with the nut formula.

Aajonus used the aftermath of the Swedish research as a case study in how food industry interests shaped public health policy. Within days of the Swedish press conference, major food corporations had their own scientists prepared to counter the findings publicly. The debate ran in the press for approximately two weeks before going entirely silent. The Swedish professors lost their positions and ended up teaching in secondary schools despite being highly credentialed researchers.

In the United States, the political response that eventually emerged was the banning of trans fatty acids from restaurant cooking in New York City, framed publicly as a measure to reduce acrylamide production. Aajonus described this as a fraud and a scam for a specific reason: changing the type of oil used for frying reduced acrylamide content by approximately 5%, meaning the acrylamide problem remained at 95% of its prior level. He was explicit that "anytime you bake anything in oil, no matter what kind of oil it is, you're going to have acrylamides." The chemistry of boiling a carbohydrate-rich food in any oil, whether a small-chain or long-chain fatty acid, produced acrylamide concentrations at the same basic magnitude. The figure he used was that the switch to non-trans fats might halve the increase from trans fats specifically, still leaving approximately 80 times greater acrylamides than in unfried food, and the baseline frying in any oil still elevated acrylamide content by the 1,500-level factor.

He also noted that using trans fatty acids in addition to the carbohydrate frying was worse because the trans fats themselves were plastic molecules, meaning the food product contained both acrylamides and plastic fat simultaneously, making chips fried in hydrogenated oils doubly toxic. He described chips as "plastic, essentially" on this basis.

The connection Aajonus drew between acrylamides and cancer was direct and structural. He stated that the Swedish research showed, across all tumors examined, that acrylamides were the highest-concentration chemical element found. He described 60% of cancer cell composition as being acrylamides in most accounts, with some versions citing 90% of cancer tissue containing heavy acrylamide concentrations. He further cited the finding that 60% of laboratory animals fed acrylamide-rich foods developed cancer.

He situated acrylamides as one of the primary factors responsible for what he described as a cancer rate of one in two for men and one in three for women in the United States. He cited the Swedish scientists' claim that acrylamides were responsible for at least 60% of all cancers. Beyond the tumor composition finding, he described the mechanism through which acrylamides contributed to cancer as involving the creation of a sticky, gummy internal environment where cells aggregated abnormally, fluids moved sluggishly, and tissues became clogged with stored toxins that the body could not discharge.

He also placed acrylamides in context alongside advanced glycation end products and high-sugar environments as factors that collectively created conditions where cancerous states could develop and proliferate. The combination of cooked carbohydrates producing acrylamides and advanced glycation end products with the already elevated sugar storage that Columbia University reportedly found occurred at 70 to 90% of cooked carbohydrate intake created what he described as an environment inherently favorable to cancer.

Aajonus extended his analysis of acrylamides into a political commentary on food aid programs directed at impoverished populations in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. He described Western governments and aid organizations channeling food aid money to corporations such as General Mills, General Foods, and Purina, which shipped processed cereals and powdered or evaporated milk to children in countries experiencing famine. He stated that the acrylamide content of these cereals was 1,500 times the quantity the body could handle, and that the children receiving this food were being poisoned rather than fed. He described the resulting disease and death in these populations as consistent with what should be expected from that level of acrylamide exposure, and characterized the entire system as a form of deliberate genocide against welfare-dependent populations globally, stating that those directing food aid programs knew what these foods did to the body.

Aajonus described acrylamides as substances that, once stored in the body, were extremely difficult to eliminate. He noted that the body's ability to handle them depended substantially on available fat. Raw fats, in sufficient quantity, could bind with acrylamides and other cooking toxins and prevent them from lodging in tissues. He stated that with adequate fat intake, the body could use acrylamides to build fat stores rather than allowing them to damage organs, though this was a protective measure rather than an elimination mechanism.

He described the lymphatic system as a primary route through which the body attempted to process and expel acrylamides and related toxins, alongside perspiration through the skin as the most common discharge pathway. He noted that the body could manage toxins more effectively when bacterial populations in the gut were high, as bacteria helped consume debris and byproducts. Without sufficient bacterial action, toxins including acrylamides tended to accumulate.

He also noted the observation he made in Vietnam through iridology of tissue from hives he experienced after drinking large quantities of fermented maca, which when laboratory-tested at a hospital in Hanoi was found to contain high concentrations of carbohydrates, advanced glycation end products, and acrylamides, all very concentrated, indicating these substances had been stored in skin tissue and were being discharged through the skin during the detoxification event.