Not very far from London, in the English county of Hertfordshire, lies an unusual wheat field.
The wheat grown here has been genetically edited to reduce the amount of acrylamide it contains once cooked, as that compound is believed to increase the risk of cancer.
To achieve this, plant and crop scientists at Rothamsted Research edited out a gene that produces a compound called asparagine.
Asparagine occurs naturally in plants and is also present in other starchy foods like potatoes and other tubers.
But when wheat is processed into flour and turned into a baked product like bread, asparagine turns into another compound called acrylamide, which is carcinogenic in very large doses.
Reducing the amount of asparagine in wheat grain would therefore mean less acrylamide in toast, cereal, and biscuits, and lower cancer risk in other cooked foods containing wheat.
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So far, the trials have seen a 50 per cent reduction in asparagine and a 50 per cent reduction in acrylamide in heated flour.
However, it doesn’t mean that eating burnt food will give people cancer, scientists caution, because the dose from food is very small.
Studies linking acrylamide to cancer have only been carried out in animals, using much higher doses than we would ingest through eating.
