Not again! More bad science.

In August, Bill Lockyer, the Attorney General of California, filed suit against McDonald’s, Burger King, Frito-Lay and six other food companies, saying they should be forced to put warning labels on all fries and chips sold in California that say something like: “This product contains a chemical known by the state of California to cause cancer.”
The state “knows” no such thing. Lockyer’s position is based on the stuff-the-mouse-till-it-explodes school of science. The labeling of acrylamide as a “probable human carcinogen,” according to Joseph Levitt, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, is based on studies where rats were fed a daily dose of 500 micrograms per kilogram of body weight over their life span.
In human terms, the average adult, who weighs more than 75 kilograms, would have to consume 195 pounds of French fries, 142 pounds of graham crackers or 5,350 one-ounce servings (333 pounds) of Cheerios every day for his or her entire life to approach the lowest level of risk observed in laboratory rats.
While acrylamide increases with high temperature cooking and canning, it also forms in uncooked foods and even at room temperature during storage. It’s not something put there by greedy corporations. The FDA’s Total Diet Study survey has found acrylamide in 40% of the food we eat.
The highest concentrations found are in black olives, graham crackers, smoked almonds, cocoa powder, coffee, onion soup, chips, whole-grain cereals and breads, stone-ground sesame and rye crackers, sweet potatoes, peanut butter, baked goods, mixed vegetables, chile, sunflower seeds and even prune juice. Lockyer needs a healthy dose of the latter to cure what seems to ail him.