Scientific understanding of alum in food

Golden and crispy fried dough sticks are a common food on the breakfast table, and potato flour is also popular among people. In recent years, reports about excessive aluminum in fried dough sticks and the addition of alum in the production process of potato flour have puzzled people. Fried dough sticks are added with alum, so is potato flour edible? Let's start with the aluminum element and discuss this topic.

Alum is also known as white alum, and its chemical formula is potassium aluminum sulfate dodecahydrate.

Where does the aluminum in fried dough sticks come from?

Youtiao is a kind of fried flour product. Its crisp taste is closely related to the ingredients in addition to the frying process. Many people have the experience of steaming steamed buns and steamed dumplings, and they must be familiar with the fluffy feeling of steamed buns after adding yeast. Similarly, ingredients that make it fluffy should be added to the dough of fried dough sticks. Unlike yeast, which uses fermentation to produce carbon dioxide and other gases to make the dough soft. In the production methods of some processing points, baking powder containing ingredients such as alum and baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) is usually added to the dough of fried dough sticks as a leavening agent. In the process of processing fried dough sticks, they produce gas (mainly carbon dioxide) through chemical reactions, which makes the dough rise and produce a porous structure, thereby achieving the foaming effect of making fried dough sticks fluffy and crispy. The use of aluminum-containing baking powder can foam quickly and efficiently, eliminating the long time required for traditional fermentation. This is an important reason why people prefer this baking powder in the process of making fried dough sticks. Another reason is that it is cheap. In this way, aluminum was introduced into fried dough sticks in the process of using aluminum-containing baking powder.

In order to make the potato flour and vermicelli more chewy and more tender, it is added during the processing.

What are the effects of aluminum on human health?

At first, people didn't care about the aluminum in fried dough sticks when enjoying delicious food, because aluminum was once considered harmless to the human body. But with the advancement of science and technology and the improvement of people's living standards, people's understanding of aluminum has gradually deepened. Studies have shown that excessive exposure and accumulation of aluminum may be one of the causes of Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's disease, senile dementia, senile dementia, brain degeneration, is a persistent neurological disorder.

my country's national food safety standard Food Additives Use Standard GB2760-2014 stipulates that the residual aluminum content in fried noodle products shall not exceed 100 mg/kg.

From this point of view, the use of food additives containing potassium alum and ammonium alum is allowed. However, in the process of making fried dough sticks, the amount of aluminum-containing food additives must be strictly controlled and the relevant regulations must be followed. After all, food safety is no small matter. Although the state has issued relevant standards, it cannot be ruled out that some businesses use them in violation of regulations, resulting in fried dough sticks with excessive aluminum content being served on the table.

Of course, from a scientific point of view, we need to find some substitutes, such as fried dough sticks and potato flour.