Is Air Fried Food Really Healthier? | Talking Point | Full Episode

the sizzle and crunch [Music] deep fried food [Music] we can't seem to get enough of it despite knowing that they are very unhealthy but since 2010 there is a revolution that has been heating up kitchens around the world air frying manufacturers promise us great tasting food with minimum fat some even claiming up to 90 percent less fat because you don't have to use any oil so now i can have my fried food without the guilt we've bought into this claim so much so that airfryer sales of a leading brand in singapore have grown by 50

percent just between 2019 and 2020 alone globally the airfryer market size is expected to reach 1.2 billion us dollars by 2026. [Music] in this episode i'm going to investigate just how much of a game changer airfrying really is how much healthier is my air fried food i think i've got to understand the technology behind it first i'm going to meet someone who can help me out [Music] food scientist joe wei biao has a keen interest in food engineering and processing this includes air frying [Music] basically air frying is creating a very hot hair and this

hot air is circulating around the food and cooks the food so this is in contrast with what we are familiar with which is deeper frying the deeper frying is utilizing hot oil as a liquid to heat up a food in airfryer the hot air will quickly cook the surface layer of food quickly dried out and that's where the crunchiness is created on the surface of a food but how does that differ from grilling or baking in an oven there is a similarity between air frying and the baking oven because it all creates hot air the

difference is although the domestic oven can also provide you that temperature but it doesn't provide the circulation which is required for air frying this is a typical airfryer a size of a fan inside the airfryer which is very similar to the size of the fan inside a baking oven if you compare with a typical baking oven over here you notice this heating element is probably even more powerful than the heating element in the airfryer however the size of the fan in the back is a very similar size so that fan is just a little bit

bigger than this fan but from what i'm understanding the oven has to cook a much larger surface correct of food as opposed to the airfryer which is much more condensed that's true [Music] airfryer have a very high speed of circulation but the baking oven is not so much therefore doesn't give you that a frying effect in a typical baking oven so can the airfryer give the same texture and taste as deep fried food if you add a little bit touch of oil it actually does bring some difference it will bring the air fry the food

closer to the deeper fry when we greatly reduce the amount of oil when we air fry we are reducing the amount of calories right yes you are it's pretty straightforward right reduce oil therefore reduce our calorie intake but i want to know just how much more healthier air frying is compared to deep frying i've carefully selected three different types of food and each food item will be air fried and deep fried first chicken the most common item that we deep fry second selar kuni the fish that we normally eat with our nasi lemak [Music] and

our favorite processed food fries i'm making them from scratch because processed chips are already high in calories i'm sending all the fried foods to this lab which specializes in food safety nutritional and contaminant testing [Music] the test parameter is total fat fatty acid incurator fat unstructured fat trans fat and cholesterol so for potatoes you're going to test for aquarium mice as well right yes that is right acrylamide why am i testing that well that's because acrylamide is a chemical that can form in starchy foods during high temperature cooking processes several reports have suggested that the

presence of acrylamide in food has the potential to cause cancer in february tests by the hong kong consumer council found acrylamide in french fries that were air fried in various models of airfryers some samples had acrylamide levels higher than the eu benchmark i find the consumer watch dogs report really worrying but the thing is acrylamide is formed when certain types of starchy foods like potatoes and bread are cooked at very high temperatures not just air frying i'm hoping my lab test results will show me if there's a difference in acrylamide levels between deep fried and

air-fried french fries as i'm about to find out the results are shocking shouldn't i be worried about that [Music] a week ago i sent samples of air-fried and deep-fried food to an international laboratory i want to find out how much healthier air fried food really is compared to its deep fried versions after more than a week i received the results carolyn stephen is a nutritionist at the food innovation and resource center she provides consultancy services to manufacturers on food science technology and innovation carrion can you help me better understand these results yeah sure so now

we have two samples here we have the fried chicken and the deep fried chicken here and if you look at the fat composition the saturated fat content has about 38 reduction in the air-fried version so that's pretty good because we know how saturated fats can increase your risk of heart disease and what is interesting here is the trans fatty acid content has been cut by 55 percent in the airfry version so that is a positive result there so 55 is really really good and we know that trans fat is even worse than saturated fat because

that increases your bad cholesterol and brings down the good cholesterol in your blood and and worsens your risk of heart disease so these are good results to see so moving on to the cholesterol there's about a 25 reduction as well and cholesterol again it's not that good for heart health so there is a big significance in the breakdown of fats and cholesterol yes you can say that okay so similarly when we look at the air-fried fish versus the deep-fried fish you can see saturated fatty acids has been reduced by about 53 percent uh interestingly there's

not much significant difference in the trans fat content perhaps because already to start with the fish did not have much of trans fatty acids yeah so moving on to cholesterol you don't see a very big difference why is there not a big difference in cholesterol it really depends on the kind of meat that you're dealing with and fish we know that is naturally healthier and now for our air fried potatoes so if we look at the saturated fatty acids there's about 53 percent reduction in the air-fried version as compared to the deep-fried version we don't

see any difference in the trans fatty acids probably it's because it's already quite low to start with in the fresh potatoes that you used potatoes do not have cholesterol because it's a plant-based food right so when it comes to trans fat airfrying helped to cut it down by 55 in my chicken samples more significant were the results for saturated fat which saw a reduction between 38 and 53 across all my samples finally what i'm most curious about acrylamide levels so it says here that deep fried potatoes contain less than 10 micrograms per kg and air

fried potatoes contain 1400 micrograms per kg it's a huge spike from deep fried food so shouldn't i be worried about that yeah definitely i understand if it raises some concern but there is no reference point or a cut-off point to say what is safe and what is not safe in fact who has recognized the fact that there's lacking evidence in the area of human studies a lot of studies that have been done in the era of acrylamide has been based on lab animals right and if you look at the singapore regulations we also do not

have a benchmark so while the jury is still out on whether we should be worried about the acrylamide levels in our food i'm still curious why was there such a big spike for air fried potatoes compared to deep fried ones to get to the bottom of it i'm bringing the results of my lab report to nicholas lee he's been overseeing the overall strategy of a leading brand of airfryer and other appliances across asia pacific so why is there such a huge difference in the levels of acrylamide between air fried and deep fried fries so there

can be three factors that influence the level of acrylamide in fresh potatoes it's the cooking time uh cooking temperature and also the preparation would you mind telling me what temperature you cooked the potatoes at well i air fried them at 200 degrees for 14 minutes and i deep fried them between medium to high heat for eight minutes so our recommendation is to cook at 180 degrees or slightly below and if you're cooking fresh potatoes 160 for the first part and then 180 for the second part and that will reduce the quantity of acrylamide that forms

so my airfried potatoes contained higher levels of acrylamide because i cooked it for too long and at too high a temperature air frying does take a little bit longer but we have some new models we have the smart chef which is actually going to calculate the time and the temperature for you so that's going to prevent topics like overcooking or cooking too high but not everyone would want to spend the money on buying newer models so if i'm still concerned about acrylamide in my food how can i ensure that the levels are kept low if

you soak the potatoes actually before you cook that will remove a lot of the starch and that's where that sugar content is that then influence the formation of acrylamide actually makes the fries taste better and then there is a lower component of acrylamide as well and if you store the potatoes in the refrigerator at a too low temperature that will increase the sugar content and then increase the amount of acrylamide so is there anything that i can observe in the food that i air fry absolutely i mean that golden brown texture that you're looking for

and beautiful homemade fries if it's too brown then that's a good sign that there is a bit too much acrylamide forming in that crust so stick to the golden brown again acrylamide it's naturally occurring in food it has been there since time immemorial and it will be there also in the future it's just about how you can reduce that through those cooking techniques since acrylamide levels in air fried food can be controlled and air fried food is healthier than deep fried ones i can try to substitute deep frying with air frying at home but when

i eat out i don't really have much of a choice [Music] though there are more than 6 000 cooked food stalls at over 100 hawker centres in singapore and there are almost 50 in this particular hawker center alone yet none of them are using the healthier option of air frying according to an online survey by nielsen in 2017 74 of the singaporean respondents are willing to pay more for food that promote health benefits so i am determined to find a stall that will sell airfry food and figure out if it's possible to incorporate air frying

into a hawker's daily operations today fatty bomb has a one hour lung special three healthier air fry food options i want to know why hawkers are not offering us the healthier option of air frying in place of deep frying i couldn't find any industrial sized airfryers but i got my hands on three airfryers with the biggest capacity that i could find in singapore and i'm teaming up with kong chi chu who manages the central kitchen and all 20 of batty bomb bombs western food stalls so i'm so excited for you to use them yeah i

need to check first okay in spite of the stall's name he's keen on offering his customers healthier options and has agreed to experiment with the air fryers three of that is a be baked i need to try out some space in my store because it's limited space chew will be offering his customers air-fried options for three side dish items on his menu kitchen rings kitchen wings and roast wing steak what will it take for hawkers to make the switch from deep frying to air frying to help chew i've recruited arena chung she was previously engaged

by a leading airfryer brand hi rina to create airfryer friendly recipes can all deep fried hawker food be substituted with air frying uh no because especially battered food they will actually create a mess in the airfryer example like indian roja or banana fritters they don't work well in airfire and there's no oil element in the airfryer to set the batter so what type of hot crystals do you think will find it easier to make the switch i think western stars that mainly use a frozen pre-fried food will be suitable for the change for example if

they cook the fries in the airfryer it will actually help to drain the oil as well right okay airfryer actually works for store that don't totally depend on frying for example nasi lemak sauce they can actually air fry their chicken wing and fish the wonton noodles they can actually pre-cook their fried one time beforehand and they can actually reheat using the air fryer so true why don't you show arena what foods you're working with today yeah yeah okay [Music] it's the chicken wing okay this is good this one works perfectly fine in the airfryer and

here is the other two items it is good that we can actually toss some oil in the onion ring so that it will actually have the oil fried effect [Music] try to make sure that the onion ring is evenly coated with the oil try not to crop the basket so that the air can actually evenly flow [Music] for onion ring is usually between five to eight minutes at 180 degrees so for this quantity we'll try out at five minutes let's see if it works has a one hour lunch special three healthier air fried food options

we have roasted wing sticks cajun rings and cajun wings would you like to try some anyone at all hi ma'am sophisticated it's cajun cajun wings and it took some convincing but i eventually managed to get diners to place orders for the air-fried options which one would you like one night it is crispy yes and i think the meat is good do you like having a healthier option on the menu yeah i like the healthier option you ate the cajun rings how did you find them it's not oily at all that's good to know it's a

good alternative i think if you deep fry it it will taste slightly nicer because it will be juicier but then because you air fry then it's a little drier because in general i don't quite like to oily stuff so if there's a fighter option i wouldn't mind going for it it tastes almost similar so would you still be a regular at this stall if they only offered air fried food yes i would love it because seriously porkers right we don't know how many times they recycle their oil personally i would yes but then on the

other hand for the public half of them i know would still prefer oily stuff but then they have a choice and large most of the customers were quite happy with the air-fried options and would love for it to be a permanent fixture on the menu so i want to know how sustainable it will be for a business to switch from deep frying to air frying so how did you find the challenge today today is quite good because these few items are just only a slight dish we take around 10 minutes for one order do you

think it's possible that one day it could be switched to air fried meals completely i think no this is a big challenge customers normally don't want to wait too long when they have a lunch time it's slow but inside the boat is uh too small so in the future if manufacturers come up with commercial or industrial size airfryers like really big would you consider using it yes because that one can cook many order and then it's more healthy so just how much healthier are air fried foods than deep frying well my test results show that

airfrying does indeed reduce saturated fat and trans fat levels by more than 50 in some foods like fried chicken and as far as acrylamide levels are concerned i've learned that i need to watch how long i air fry my food for and not to overcook it but while it's easy and convenient to air fry at home finding air fried options when i eat outside is challenging so for now i guess i'll just have to air fry at home when i'm craving for something deep fried