Bread, chips and potatoes should be cooked to a golden yellow colour, rather than brown, to reduce our intake of a chemical which could cause cancer, government food scientists are warning.

This is an automatic summary, original reduced by 80%.

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Acrylamide is present in many different types of food and is a natural by-product of the cooking process.

The Food Standards Agency says it is not clear exactly how much acrylamide can be tolerated by people, but it does believe that we are eating too much of it.

The possible effects of acrylamide exposure include an increased lifetime risk of cancer and effects on the nervous and reproductive systems.

As well as advising the public, the Food Standards Agency is also working with industry to reduce acrylamide in processed food.

There has been some progress - between 2007 and 2015, it found evidence of an average 30% reduction in acrylamide across all products in the UK. Steve Wearne, director of policy at the Food Standards Agency, said most people were not aware that acrylamide even existed.

Emma Shields, health information officer from Cancer Research UK, acknowledges that acrylamide in food could be linked to cancer - but she says the link is not clear and consistent in humans.

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