Air fryers have taken oven kitchen countertops across the UK, promising the crunch of deep-fried food without the guilt. But are they actually a healthier way to cook, or just clever marketing? Here's a look at what the research says.
How Air Fryers Actually Work
Despite the name, an air fryer doesn't actually "fry" anything in the traditional sense. It's essentially a compact convection oven: a fan circulates very hot air rapidly around the food, crisping the outside while keeping the inside moist. This is quite different from deep frying, which submerges food in hot oil to achieve a similar crispy texture.
The Case For Air Fryers
Less oil, fewer calories. The most obvious benefit is oil reduction. Air frying typically requires only around a tablespoon of oil, and can cut the calories you'd get from deep frying by as much as 80%. Studies comparing the two methods have found that deep-fried chips can retain around ten times more oil than the air-fried equivalent cooked for the same length of time.
Lower fat, better for weight management. Because they use so little oil, air-fried foods generally end up lower in fat and calories than their deep-fried counterparts. This can make air fryers a useful tool if you're trying to manage your weight or reduce your overall fat intake, since air-fried food tends to be lower in fat and calories than traditionally fried food.
Nutrient retention. There's also some evidence that the quick cooking time of an air fryer helps hold onto more of a food's natural nutrients compared with other high-heat methods, though a degree of nutrient loss is still expected with any cooking process at high temperatures.
The Catch: Acrylamide
Here's where it gets more nuanced. Whenever starchy, carbohydrate-rich foods like potatoes, chips, or bread are cooked at high temperatures, they can form a chemical compound called acrylamide.
Acrylamide forms when foods are heated above roughly 120°C, and it's one of the chemical hazards linked to the heat treatment of starchy foods like potatoes. It's classified by healthy authorities as a probable human carcinogen based on animal studies, through the real-world cancer risk from dietary levels in humans is still being researched.
The good news is that air frying appears to produce meaningfully less acrylamide than deep frying. One widely cited study found that air frying reduced acrylamide in fried potatoes by around 90% compared with traditional frying, and separate research has found reductions in the range of 75 to 90% versus deep-fat frying. That's a substantial drop, though it's worth noting that some acrylamide is still present in air-fried food, it isn't eliminated entirely.
So, Are Air Fryers Healthy?
The honest answer is: it depends on what you put in them. As one US dietary puts it, air frying can be a healthy way to cook, but the fact that something has been air-fried doesn't automatically make it a healthy food. Air-frying a bag of frozen chips is still, nutritionally, a bag of chips - just one with noticeably less oil and fat than if you'd deep-fried it.
Where air fryers genuinely shine is as a lower-fat alternative to deep frying and oven roasting with lots of added oil. If you're regularly cooking chips, wedges, chicken, or vegetables and want to cut down on saturated fat and calories without sacrificing that crispy texture, an air fryer is a solid upgrade over the deep-fat fryer.
Tips To Make Air Frying Even Healthier
- Soak starchy vegetables first. Soaking pre-cut potatoes, squash, and other root vegetables in filtered water for at least 15 minutes before cooking has been shown to help reduce acrylamide formation.
- Don't overcook. Avoiding overcooked or overly browned food helps limit acrylamide exposure, since longer cooking times at high heat increase formation.
- Balance your cooking methods. Boiling and steaming don't generally produce acrylamide, so mixing air frying with other cooking methods across the week helps keep overall exposure down.
- Focus on whole foods. Use your air fryer for vegetables, lean proteins, and homemade dishes rather than relying on it purely for reheating processed, breaded, or ultra-processed foods.
- Watch the oil you do use. Since air fryers need so little oil, it's an easy opportunity to upgrade to a higher-quality option like olive or avocado oil rather than defaulting to cheaper, more processed oils.
The Bottom Line
Air fryers aren't a magic health appliance, but they're a genuine improvement over deep frying when it comes to fat, calories, and acrylamide levels. Used thoughtfully - with a variety of whole foods, sensible cooking times, and not excessively for chips and processed snacks - an air fryer can absolutely be part of a healthy kitchen setup.
This article is for general information only. If you have specific health or dietary concerns, it's worth speaking with a registered dietitian or your GP.
