Just four years ago, on the Thursday morning of 25 April 2002, millions of people awoke to newspaper and TV reports that their breakfast might be laced with a deadly chemical.
They hadn’t been poisoned, nor were they victims of an unscrupulous food manufacturer. Nevertheless, the reports warned, the slice of bread, bowl of cereal or plate of waffles in front of them might contain a potent cancer-causing chemical called acrylamide. The implications were astounding. Scientists said the chemical might be impossible to eradicate, as it was created during the normal cooking process. And the health effects were impossible to judge.…
