Food and Flavor Analysis
- High sensitivity to a wide range of aroma and off-flavor compounds
- Direct measurement without sample preparation
- High reproducibility and compound libraries for robust quality control
- Full-spectrum acquisition and compound ID to explore new samples
Background
Food and Flavor Analysis
Food quality and flavor are determined by volatile organic compounds (VOCs), a diverse and ubiquitous set of chemicals present in all food. Flavor and aroma might be determined by a single VOC, such as benzaldehyde in artificial almond flavor, or by a complex interaction of hundreds of VOCs, for example, in the flavor profile of olive oil, bread, wine, or coffee. Other VOCs may be metabolites created by bacterial or fungal activity, and detection of these can warn us of food spoilage or undesirable flavors.
Human beings can sensitively detect VOCs via smell and taste receptor proteins, but analytical instrumentation such as the Vocus CI-TOF allows scientists to characterize the VOC profile of food far more sensitively, quickly, and reproducibly than any human taste tester. The fast, simultaneous detection of hundreds to thousands of VOCs with the Vocus CI-TOF opens up further possibilities to detect forgeries, quantify the quality of food and raw materials, and optimize fermentation processes using sophisticated chemical fingerprinting algorithms. Real-time nose-space analysis opens the possibility to correlate flavor with consumer’s sensory perceptions during food consumption.
Solutions
Food and Flavor Analysis with Trace Level Detection Using the Vocus CI-TOF
- Highest sensitivity available with sub-ppt limits of detection
- High mass resolving power enables identification of individual compounds within complex mixtures
- Real-time and fast data output capturing rapid changes in VOC concentrations and suitable for high-throughput tasks
- Full spectrum acquisition allows measurements of wide range of compounds simultaneously
Concentration of oxidation byproducts in the headspace of fish oil stored under closed ambient air for an increasing number of days. The concentrations of all species are positively correlated with the aging time but plateau at different rates.
Resources
Related Instruments
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