Cooking meats on high heat is really dangerous?

Nutrition Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hello,
Though I try to follow your general recommendations on nutrition, I couldn’t find anything related to the following problem. I am biased towards that it causes adverse effects if any meat is cooked on high heat. I, some time ago, read a study about acrylamides & how it is formed & how it might cause dangerous things and it probably had nocebo effect on me :slight_smile:
So whenever I cook chicken breast on cast iron heated high, the surface of the meat turns into pinky crispy form and I start to think “oh no, acrylamide and other dangerous chemicals are being created now it is better not to eat it”. This usually leads me to underperform my daily recommended protein intake since the chicken breast is the most available protein source for me.

Does this method really harmful? Do I really need to avoid pinky crispy meats cooked on high meat and rather prefer boiled chicken?

2

From our article:

  1. Heterocyclic amines (HCA) – formed when amino acids in meat react with high temperatures.
  2. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) – smoke contains PAHs that adhere to surface of meat during cooking. These may not be health-promoting, but saying they’re dangerous is a bit of a stretch to me based on present evidence. I wouldn’t worry about this at all tbh.

-Jordan