Food analysis is a diverse and interdisciplinary field of research that has a significant health, societal and economic impact. It aims to characterize food products in terms of chemical composition, traceability, safety, quality, sensory perception and nutritional value.
What is food analysis based on?
Food analysis is based on difference testing, the fundamental approach to sensory analysis of food. A simple difference test permits one of the two responses ‘Yes, there is a difference’ or ‘No, there is a no difference’. In directional difference testing, a judge is asked which sample is more in a predefined characteristic.
What is a nutritional analysis?
A nutritional analysis is the description of the method used to determine the amounts of these nutrients in a particular food. Nutrients are generally reported on a one hundred gram basis as a certificate of analysis (Fig 1.1). After obtaining results, the nutrition analysis is used to prepare label nutrient disclosures on food packaging.
What are the analytical procedures in food science?
These analytical procedures are used to provide information about a wide variety of different characteristics of foods, including their composition, structure, physicochemical properties and sensory attributes.
How is nutrition analysis used in food labeling?
After obtaining results, the nutrition analysis is used to prepare label nutrient disclosures on food packaging. In the United States, these disclosures are regulated by the FDA and titled “Nutrition Facts”.
What is the food analysis?
Food analysis is a diverse and interdisciplinary field of research that has a significant health, societal and economic impact. It aims to characterize food products in terms of chemical composition, traceability, safety, quality, sensory perception and nutritional value.
What are the benefits of food analysis?
Analysis of food not only provides information about composition, appearance, texture, flavor, shelf-life, safety, processibility, and microstructure, but also guarantees product quality. Knowledge of the chemical and biochemical composition of foods is important to the health, well-being, and safety of the consumers.
What are the steps of food analysis?
Analysis of the properties of a food material depends on the successful completion of a number of different steps: planning (identifying the most appropriate analytical procedure), sample selection, sample preparation, performance of analytical procedure, statistical analysis of measurements, and data reporting.
What is the meaning of nutritional analysis?
Nutrition analysis refers to the process of determining the nutritional content of foods and food products. The process can be performed through a variety of certified methods.
What is analysis techniques?
An analytical technique (analytical method) is a procedure or a method for the analysis of some problem, status or a fact. Analytical techniques are usually time-limited and task-limited. They are used once to solve a specific issue.Feb 14, 2017
What is classical method of food analysis?
Classical analysis, also termed wet chemical analysis, consists of those analytical techniques that use no mechanical or electronic instruments other than a balance. The method usually relies on chemical reactions between the material being analyzed (the analyte) and a reagent that is added to the…
What is an analysis example?
The definition of analysis is the process of breaking down a something into its parts to learn what they do and how they relate to one another. Examining blood in a lab to discover all of its components is an example of analysis.
How do you Analyse a sample?
Implementing a sampling plan usually involves three steps: physically removing the sample from its target population, preserving the sample, and preparing the sample for analysis. When an analytical method is selective for the analyte, analyzing a sample is a relatively simple task.Sep 11, 2021
What is sample preparation in food analysis?
Sample preparation is the obtaining and manipulation of representative portions of a whole prior to subjecting it to any particular analysis.Sep 15, 2006
What is feed analysis and how is it used?
The detergent feed analysis system is used to characterize fiber or total cell wall content of a forage or feed.Sep 18, 2013
How is nutritional analysis done?
Laboratory based nutritional analysis methods require a physical sample of the product(s) be sent to the laboratory. The samples are then prepped and analyzed in the laboratory using various scientific instruments and techniques to yield data that is specific and unique to the product.
What are the 7 elements of nutrition?
There are seven major classes of nutrients: carbohydrates, fats, dietary fiber, minerals, proteins, vitamins, and water.
Sensing Materials: Electrochemical Applications of DNA Sensors and Biosensors
Caroline G. Sanz, ... Silvia H.P. Serrano, in Reference Module in Biomedical Sciences, 2021
Immunological Methods in Microbiology
In food analysis, food suspension is cultured for a certain period of time before the assay to achieve higher proliferation in the target bacteria than the LOD. However, the doubling time of a certain bacteria may be several tens of minutes or more, requiring long culture periods (Yoshida, Yanagi, & Yoshikai, 2015 ).
Citric Acid
Hadi Poerwono, ... Harry G. Brittain, in Analytical Profiles of Drug Substances and Excipients, 2001
ANALYSIS OF FOOD
K. Gupta, ... G. Talwar, in Encyclopedia of Food Sciences and Nutrition (Second Edition), 2003
Sampling Theory and Methodology
S. Lacorte, ... M. Cortina-Puig, in Comprehensive Sampling and Sample Preparation, 2012
Chemometrics
When dealing with food analysis or characterization, exploratory data analysis, although necessary, may not be sufficient, as many problems may require the prediction of one or more quantitative or qualitative properties of the samples.
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)
An area of food analysis where PCR techniques have become of particular importance is the detection of the presence of GMOs. Transgenes are not generally toxicants, but because their presence in food can be accidental, the means for their detection are analogous to those used for microbial contaminants.
Why is it important to test food?
Any product that is going to be used by humans needs to be rigorously tested, and because foodstuffs are ingested, the testing is often more crucial to avoid any health issues from occurring. If a company produces bad foodstuffs, then the consumer can not only get ill, but it can also cost the company a lot of money in lawsuits and in reputation (the latter of which often has worse long-term implications compared to short-term financial losses). So, ensuring that foodstuffs contain what they are meant to (in the ratios they are meant to) is crucial and can be performed either in-house or at a contract analysis/research institute.
Is food analysis a single area?
Overall, food analysis is not a single area, but all the methods are used in a quality control capacity. The most common is to check the constituents of a product to ensure that it meets internal and regulatory standards, but the applications are widespread, and all the food analysis areas are an essential component of the food and beverage industry.
Why is food analysis important?
Analysis of foods is continuously requesting the development of more robust, efficient, sensitive, and cost-effective analytical methodologies to guarantee the safety, quality, and traceability of foods in compliance with legislation and consumers’ demands. The old methods used at the beginning of the 20th century based on the so-called “wet chemistry” have evolved into the current powerful instrumental techniques used in food laboratories. This improvement has led to significant enhancements in analytical accuracy, precision, detection limits, and sample throughput, thereby expanding the practical range of food applications. As mentioned by McGorrin [ 1] “ the growth and infrastructure of the modern global food distribution system heavily relies on food analysis (beyond simple characterization) as a tool for new product development, quality control, regulatory enforcement, and problem-solving.” Besides, currently, there is also a huge interest in the health-related properties of foods as a result of an increasing public concern on how to improve health through the so-called functional foods, functional ingredients, and nutraceuticals. Thus, there is no doubt on the importance and current need of analytical techniques developments able to face all these demands.
What are some examples of food analysis?
A good example is the study of the geographical origin of foods via the analyses of stable isotope ratio of light elements [ 114] or the meta-analysis of the effects of pasteurization on milk vitamins [ 115 ]. This is also the case of the analysis of the volatile fraction of foods, which is known to have a crucial effect on food quality and acceptance. The study of the volatile fraction of food or beverage requires analytical methods and technologies able not only to evaluate its composition exhaustively but also to monitor variations of its profile and to detect trace components characterizing the food being investigated. The strategies of analysis have changed significantly over the last 15–20 years because of the introduction of new approaches, in particular: (i) solventless sample preparation techniques; (ii) fast gas chromatography and related techniques; (iii) new analytical techniques, such as comprehensive gas chromatography (GC); (iv) new operative strategies based on approaches developed for other fields and applied to food analysis; (v) data elaboration strategies producing a higher level of information [ 116 ]. Chiral analysis has also seen an important growing in food analysis, since chiral methods can be used to study and characterize foods and beverages through the enantiomeric separation of different food compounds such as amino acids, pesticides, and polyphenols [ 117 ]. Another example is the investigation on food texture in which physical characteristics perceived by the senses are investigated. Research in this area has evolved tremendously in the last decade based on multidisciplinary approaches that encompass chemistry, physics, physiology, and psychology, to study fracture of food, the sounds it makes during biting and chewing, its microstructure, muscle movements during mastication, swallowing, and acceptability, and so forth [ 118, 119 ].
What are some examples of analytical techniques?
For example, they can be spectroscopic (e.g., mass spectrometry (MS); nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR); infrared (IR); atomic spectroscopy (AS)), biological (polymerase chain reaction (PCR); immunological techniques; biosensors), electrochemical (including also biosensors here), for separation (e.g., high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC); gas chromatography (GC); capillary electrophoresis (CE); supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC)), for sample preparation (e.g., solid phase extraction (SPE); supercritical fluid extraction (SFE); headspace (HS); flow injection analysis (FIA); purge and trap (PAT); microwave-assisted extraction (MAE); automatic thermal desorption (ATD)), hyphenated (e.g., putting together separation and spectroscopic techniques), and so forth. Every technique provides specific information on the sample or components under study based on a specific physical-chemical interaction, and all have their own advantages and drawbacks when applied to food analysis as will be discussed below. A description of the huge number of analytical techniques commonly used in food analysis is out of the scope of this work. An additional idea on the complexity of the number of techniques currently involved in food analysis can be obtained developing a little more one of the above subdisciplines. Considering the case of immunological techniques, they include the following ones: enzyme immunoassay (EIA), enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), immunodotting, radioimmunoassay (RIA), solid-phase RIA, liquid-phase RIA, immunoradiometric assay (IRMA), fluorescence: fluorescence immunoassay, enzyme-linked fluorescent immunoassay, fluorescence polarization immunoassay (FPIA), time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay (TRFI), and chemiluminescence immunoassay (CIA), up to 27 techniques can be associated to immunological techniques.
Why is bioinformatics important in foodomics?
Thus, bioinformatics has become also a crucial tool in Foodomics. Over the last years, the use of biological knowledge accumulated in public databases by means of bioinformatics allows to systematically analyse large data lists in an attempt to assemble a summary of the most significant biological aspects. Also, statistical tools are usually applied, for example, for exploratory data analysis to determine correlations among samples (which can be caused by either a biological difference or a methodological bias), for discriminating the complete data list and reduce it with the most relevant ones for biomarkers discovery, and so forth
What is spectroscopy in food analysis?
This information is provided by the wavelength or frequency detected in the emitted or absorbed energy spectrum. Spectroscopic techniques have found in food analysis a large use due to that they are fast, give direct measurement of the food constituents, do not use toxic reactants and solvents, can be used in process line, are not destructive and noninvasive, and some of them can detect several compounds simultaneously [ 37 ]. Nowadays, spectroscopic techniques based on infrared region are one of the most numerous in the food analysis. Thus, infrared spectroscopy is frequently used for quality control of food including analysis of honey [ 38] or muscle food [ 39 ]. Spectroscopic techniques based on the near infrared (NIR) spectrum have also been used to identify transgenic foods [ 40] or for measuring bioactive compounds in foods [ 41 ]. The use of the midinfrared region has been applied to study the secondary structure of food proteins [ 42] or to study intact food systems exploring their molecular structure-quality relationships [ 43 ], while raman spectroscopy has also found a number of applications in agricultural products and food analysis [ 44 ]. Another spectroscopic technique such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has been used for the rapid analysis of oil and fact content in agrifood products [ 45 ], or in the mode 31P NMR to solve different problems in food analysis [ 46 ]. Other topics currently under development are the application of chemiluminescence in food analysis [ 47] or the use of chemiluminescence as detection in LC [ 48] or CE [ 49 ]. Other spectroscopic techniques like fluorescence [ 50] or modern electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry have also found interesting applications in food analysis [ 51 ].
Who wrote the review of chromatographic methods for determination of synthetic food dyes?
M. Kucharska and J. Grabka, “A review of chromatographic methods for determination of synthetic food dyes,” Talanta, vol. 80, no. 3, pp. 1045–1051, 2010. View at: Publisher Site | Google Scholar
Who wrote 100 years of progress in food analysis?
R. J. Mcgorrin, “One hundred years of progress in food analysis,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, vol. 57, no. 18, pp. 8076–8088, 2009. View at: Publisher Site | Google Scholar
What do food scientists do?
Food scientists and technologists determine the chemical composition and physical characteristics of foods routinely as part of their quality management, product development, or research activities. Consumer, government, and food industry concern for food quality and safety has increased the importance of analyses that determine composition ...
How to make a decision on the results of an analysis?
To successfully base decisions on results of any analysis, one must correctly conduct all three major steps in the analysis: (1) select and prepare samples, (2) perform the assay, and (3) calculate and interpret the results. The choice of analysis method is usually based on the objective of the analysis, characteristics of the method itself, ...
Why is food analysis important?
foodstuffs) is crucial from a quality control perspective to ensure that products have the right nutrient levels, contain all the right constituents, are what they say are (to prevent food forgery) and comply with local and international regulations (if applicable). To ensure this, there are a wide number of food analysis techniques which are used, either in-house, in government facilities or contract research organizations.
What is the purpose of atomic absorption spectroscopy?
Atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) is a technique which is used across the food industry to detect the presence of metals in a food or beverage sample. AAS itself is a technique that is widely used in analytical labs to determine the concentration of various chemical elements in a sample by how they absorb light (which are then compared against known standards).
What is gas chromatography?
Gas chromatography (GC) is a technique which is used on volatile compounds. In a GC instrument, a sample is heated so that it turns into a gas, and the gaseous elements are then analyzed by the detector. It is a method that can be used to separate elements and molecules, as well for identifying what is present in a sample and the purity of a substance. The time it takes for the molecule (the elution time) to get to the detector is used to determine what molecules are present in the sample. In the food and beverage industry, it is widely used for determining the purity and proof (i.e. concentration) of various alcoholic beverages, as the ethanol molecules are one of the few molecules used in the industry that are easily vaporized.
Do foods have to comply with regulations?
Most foodstuffs and beverages need to comply with local regulations and depending on the size and global reach of the manufacturer, the products often need to conform to the local regulations of every country they are being sold in ( or regional regulations such as the EU). Aside from conforming to regulations, food analysis methods are put in place ...
Why is chemical analysis necessary?
Chemical analysis is also necessary when other methods of nutritional analysis are not appropriate for the type of food or for the processing techniques used to make the food. Beef jerky is a classic example of a food that should be analyzed chemically for nutrient content.
Why are nutrients disclosed on food packaging?
These mandates are intended to help populations reduce nutrient deficiencies and preventable diseases caused by malnutrition. A nutritional analysis is the description of the method used ...
What is nutritional facts?
In Nutrition Facts, nutrients are declared based on a foods serving size. Serving sizes are regulated by the FDA and determined by a reference amount of food customarily consumed per eating occasion, or RACC table, for different food categories.
What is the main concern with database analysis?
The main concern with database analysis is that the results be truthful and not misleading compared to what the FDA would find when performing chemical analysis on the food. For database nutrition analysis the results are only as good as the recipe information provided to the analyst and the quality of the nutrient data used. ...
Is chemical analysis required by FDA?
A chemical nutritional analysis is not necessary or required by the FDA in most cases. A recipe, or database, analysis is generally an appropriate, and accurate, method of nutritional analysis for most types of food. There are also the added benefits of speed and economy with this method. The main concern with database analysis is that the results be truthful and not misleading compared to what the FDA would find when performing chemical analysis on the food. For database nutrition analysis the results are only as good as the recipe information provided to the analyst and the quality of the nutrient data used. When the information is good a database analysis can be as accurate and reliable as a chemical analysis of the food.
Does the FDA approve food labels?
Their role in regulating food labeling is more of an enforcement function rather than an approval function. The FDA does not approve food labels or the Nutrition Facts on them. However, they do regulate food labeling and enforce those regulations as resources allow and necessity guides them.
Is the FDA concerned about the method food manufacturers use for nutritional analysis?
The FDA is not so much concerned about the method food manufacturers use for nutritional analysis , and database calculations are an acceptable method in most cases. They are more concerned that the resulting Nutrition Facts be truthful and not misleading.
Importance of Food Analysis
Analysis of Nutritional Content
Food Forgery
- Food forgery is another big reason that food analyses take place. One big area of food forgery is honey. Honey can be ultra-filtered to the point where it’s source cannot be traced without advanced analytical methods (and even then, it can be tricky). Moreover, the honey can contain added sugar syrups which make it more processed than it should be, lowering the value and qua…
Food Analysis Methods
- The other area of food forgery where food analysis methods are key is meat products. There was a big scandal in the UK a few years ago where burgers that were supposed to contain beef, were partially made of horse meat. Food analysis methods are in place to prevent this from happening (although the odd one gets through before being noticed). Food analysis methods can be used t…
Conclusion
- Overall, food analysis is not a single area, but all the methods are used in a quality control capacity. The most common is to check the constituents of a product to ensure that it meets internal and regulatory standards, but the applications are widespread, and all the food analysis areas are an essential component of the food and beverage industr...
Sources and Further Reading
- Intertek: http://www.intertek.com/food/chemical-nutritional-testing/
- “CHEMICAL FOOD ANALYSIS A PRACTICAL MANUAL” – B. R. D’Arcy and Hawes G., A University of Queensland Publication, 2003