Molecular Characterization of Cooking Processes: A Metabolomics Decoding of Vaporous Emissions for Food Markers and Thermal Reaction Indicators.

Thermal processing of food plays a fundamental role in everyday life. Whereas most researchers study thermal processes directly in the matrix, molecular information in the form of non- and semivolatile compounds conveyed by vaporous emissions is often neglected. We performed a metabolomics study of processing emissions from 96 different food items to define the interaction between the processed matrix and released metabolites.

Sample preparation of free sterols from vegetable oils by countercurrent chromatography in co-current mode.

Countercurrent chromatography (CCC) is a preparative instrumental method where both the mobile and stationary phases are liquids and which are predominantly used for the isolation of natural products. In this study, we widened the scope of CCC by using it as an instrumental method for the direct enrichment of the free sterol fraction from plant oils to which they contribute with ~ 1%. For the enrichment of sterols in a narrow band, we employed the so-called co-current CCC (ccCCC) mode in which both liquid phases of the solvent system (here: n-hexane/ethanol/methanol/water (34:11:12:2, v/v/v/v)) are moved at different flow rates in the same direction.