use a food thermometer to confirm that the center has reached a safe temperature.
What About Acrylamide?
This is one area that deserves some attention.
Acrylamide can form when certain carbohydrate-rich foods are cooked at high temperatures, particularly when they become very browned or crisp.
It can occur with several cooking methods, including baking, roasting, frying, and air frying.
That doesn’t mean you need to stop using an air fryer.
A practical approach is to avoid unnecessarily burning or heavily browning foods and to follow the cooking instructions for your appliance.
Variety also matters. A diet based primarily on minimally processed foods is generally a better long-term strategy than focusing on one cooking appliance.
The Biggest Mistake: Assuming “Air-Fried” Means Healthy
Marketing can make air frying sound almost magical.
But turning a highly processed food into an air-fried version doesn’t suddenly make it nutritious.
Consider two meals:
Meal A: air-fried
