Effects of nuts, dried fruits, dried seeds and black olives as enrichment ingredients on acrylamide concentrations in sweet and savoury biscuits

This study investigated the effect of adding 10% almonds, pistachios, apricots, plums, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, and black olives to sweet and savoury biscuits on acrylamide (AA) concentration. These ingredients, which are increasingly used to enrich bakery products, can increase the final AA content, because they contain its precursors and sometimes AA itself, due to the processing treatments they undergo. The AA and some quality characteristics of all ingredients and biscuit samples were analysed. The results showed that sweet biscuits with almonds, pistachios and apricots had AA concentrations exceeding the European benchmark level (350 ug/kg), while those with plums had a lower value (190.7 ug/kg). The enriched savoury biscuits had significantly higher AA concentrations than the control (198.9 ug/kg), up to +163%. A 10% addition of enrichment ingredients to biscuits can lead to high AA concentrations, highlighting the need for further studies aimed at its mitigation in bakery products.