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Issue 1 2009
20 February 2009
Consumers today make well-informed choices about the food products they purchase. Savvy shoppers have access to a wealth of information and select their products based on brand recognition, nutritional labelling and differentiating attributes such as Certified organic, allergen-free and fair-trade. The food processing industry must continually evolve to keep pace with consumer expectations for safe, nutritional and innovative food products. For example, the demand for ready-to-eat food stuffs requires exceptional standards for cleanliness and hygiene in a food plant.
20 February 2009
Globalisation has been a significant factor behind the financial meltdown in which we all find ourselves now, but it has also led to significant changes in the variety and origin of the foodstuffs which line our supermarket shelves. In previous articles, I have discussed some analytical responses to the concerns which consumers have regarding claims made on the labels of processed foods; fingerprint technologies, such as near infrared spectroscopy, possess specific features which make them well-suited for deployment to address at least some of these concerns. The focus of this article is on the appropriate chemometric strategy to deploy in the confirmation or determination of issues of the provenance of a food or food ingredient.
20 February 2009
In the mid-nineties, genetically modified crops (GM) that had been obtained through recombinant DNA technology were grown commercially at a large scale for the first time. The agricultural area that is covered with these crops has since then grown steadily, reaching 114 million hectares globally in 20072. GM crops and the foods and animal feed that are derived from them commonly have to be approved for marketing, for which they also have to undergo a safety assessment.
20 February 2009
Consumers prefer food products, convenience products and ready-to-eat meals to have the taste of being freshly made. Moreover, it must be nutritious, safe, of high quality and originate from sustainable production. High-pressure (HP) technology can be utilised to its full potential as a minimal processing method to address consumers preferences and reflect the human ethics of natural, tasty, clean-label and eco-friendly products. For example, it is possible to produce chicken meat with improved oxidative stability and high water holding capacity and neutral milk gels with less sugar. The future new type of HP-food products may be just around the corner.
20 February 2009
The consumers want to see the product they are purchasing. The shops use special lighting in order to sell more, at the same time as prolonging the opening hours. The price the consumer pays for the combination of increased light exposure and the desire to see food products is that the food can be deteriorated by the light. Dairy products develop off-odour and taste faults (‘sunlight taste’), meat products become grey, oily and fatty products turn rancid and vitamins degrade. However, the question is which light waves are most damaging for the food in the display cabinets?
20 February 2009
Traditional pasta is made from semolina and water. Its simplicity in composition has made it an inexpensive meal that is familiar to many people worldwide. The milling of durum wheat into semolina removes the bran and germ which are rich in dietary fibre, vitamins and minerals. To offset the loss of these healthful components, many countries require pasta to be fortified with thiamine, niacin, riboflavin, folic acid and ferrous sulphate.
20 February 2009
Since the introduction of atmospheric pressure ionisation liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (API-LC-MS) in the early 1990s, there was a continuous effort to further improve the performance of the LC-MS instruments concerning sensitivity and robustness. One result of this development is the trend towards methods that are designed to simultaneously analyse a large number of analytes with little or even without any sample clean-up and/or analyte enrichment. It is evident that this approach exhausts the capabilities of the mass spectrometers to the extreme. In this article, the difficulties that are usually encountered during the development of such a multi-analyte method are discussed using the example of mycotoxins.
20 February 2009
This paper argues the case for increased awareness of the importance of training and competence in management of food and water safety, prevention of food-borne and waterborne illnesses and improvement of health and nutritional status. The challenge is huge as almost everyone needs to receive education commensurate with his or her role in the food chain and the assurance of water safety.
20 February 2009
Hygiene is a key focal area among food industry companies. At a time when producers are beset by a whole range of issues, this area demands investment. Ideally, the required level of hygiene should be adjusted in respect to the other requirements in the area of product quality and preservation. TNO's quick scan helps achieve improvements in hygienic production and demonstrate that there is profit in the investments!
20 February 2009
Consumer awareness of additives drives the industry to launch natural and/or clean label products. Products without added flavours and colourings or with only natural flavours and colours are well known in the market. However, further cleaning of the product label is thorough as it focuses on functional additives and texturising ingredients, such as stabilisers, thickeners, emulsifiers and preservatives. Research at NIZO food research demonstrated that proteins are a unique source of clean label ingredients with opportunities to tailor their functionality, not only as texturising ingredients but also as preservatives.
20 February 2009
Small organic molecules migrating from packaging or other food contact materials (FCM) may result in unwanted changes of the composition of the food. These molecules can be the ‘usual suspects', i.e. starting materials (non-reacted monomers) and additives but also by-products, reaction products, impurities, degradation products of additives and conjugation products, also called non-intentionally added substances (NIAS). A recent example of NIAS originating from packaging materials is the migration of semicarbazide formed as a toxic decomposition product of azodicarbonamide used as a blowing agent for plastics. This example clearly shows that for safe packaging materials it is necessary to apply analytical methodologies and concepts that are capable to address the issue of unlisted substances.
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