Food Profiling: How well do you know your foods?

By Tim Jenkins, PhD

What market trends are driving the need for more innovative food testing methodologies like food profiling?

The expansion of global trade and growing demand from consumers has created new concerns for governments and food producers alike. The demand for new products and high value commodities has lead to an increase in fraudulent and counterfeit foodstuffs within both domestic and world markets. With reports of 5 to 10% of global food trade involving counterfeit goods, the equivalent to approximately $500 Billion of product, government regulatory agencies are compelled to implement programs that will ensure consumer safety while protecting domestic and export markets. The impact of counterfeit goods on food manufacturers is no less significant. To ensure quality and preserve brand image, these organizations must continually evaluate both raw materials and final product. As a result, the adoption of procedures that will more comprehensively characterize food stuffs is becoming more critical for these organizations.

Help us gain a better understanding of the food profiling approach. For what type of applications is it used? 

Food producers, government laboratories and contract testing organizations can use food profiling in a number of applications that are crucial to the production and distribution of safe, high quality products of well characterized composition. The applications include food authenticity – Is the product truly what it is supposed to be? Food Origin – In what geographic region was the food product produced? Food Purity – Has a premium food product been accidentally or purposely adulterated? For example, is it a pure olive oil or has it been blended with other less expensive edible oils. Production methods – Does the premium price of a product match the actual method of production, for example, orange juice that is 'fresh squeezed' or 'produced from concentrate'. And finally, food profiling can complement sensorial panels – While a specialist can distinguish wines based on their subjective organoleptic characteristic, food profiling can help provide the objective link between an organoleptic characteristic and the presence of a chemical compound (also referred to as a 'marker').

How does food profiling work? What are the technologies and steps involved?

Regardless of the application or food type we can typically describe food profiling by the same workflow. The first and most important step is 'sample selection'. The variety and number of samples need to be large and truly representative of the groups requiring differentiation. Within foodstuffs, natural variations occur due to climate, harvest time, storage conditions, etc. These 'intra-group' differences need to be compensated for if confidence in the resultant 'identified markers' is to be high. The second step is 'data acquisition'. It is very important to acquire as much data as possible, which is why mass spectrometry (MS) is the preferred detection technology.  MS offers a high degree of specificity enabling the characterisation of relevant markers. The next step is 'data processing'. Comprehensive data acquisition techniques, such as MS, generate large volumes of data. By applying chemometrics software, an automated analysis tool, laboratories have the ability to process highly complex, unbiased datasets that provide statistically based separations of samples, facilitating the identification of differences or similarities between sample groups. The last step is 'data interpretation'. While data processing provides the retention time (via liquid chromatography) and molecular weight (via MS) of the relevant markers, final characterisation occurs when this data is cross-referenced with a chemical compound library, allowing for definitive identification.

What are some examples of food products that can be analyzed using the food profiling methodology?

The combination of high efficiency chromatographic separations with mass spectrometry and chemometrics provides food testing laboratories with the ability to characterize foodstuffs in relation to differing geographical origins, adulteration, fraudulent product claims, competitive differences, and many other factors. Premium food products like olive oil, coffee and wine, therefore are excellent candidates for application of the food profiling methodology. Other food products might include teas, juices, and beer.