Developing a rapid and sensitive method for determination of trans-fatty acids in edible oils using middle-infrared spectroscopy.

Several countries have adopted labelling policy concerning the declaration of trans fatty acids (TFAs) content in the nutritional facts panel of processed food. Consequently, the food industry requires rapid methods to measure low levels of TFAs. This paper reports the development of a rapid method to determine TFAs <1% in edible oils (palm, peanut, soybean and sunflower) and oils/fat samples extracted from finished products using attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR).

Raman spectroscopic determination of norbixin and tartrazine in sugar.

In this paper, a method for the detection of norbixin and tartrazine in sugar by means of resonance Raman spectroscopy is presented. The extraction was done in four steps using methanol and the measurements were performed in aqueous solution. The excitation wavelength was 514 nm for norbixin and 488 nm for tartrazine samples.

Evaluation of Colloids and Activation Agents for Determination of Melamine Using UV-SERS.

UV-SERS measurements offer a great potential for environmental or food (detection of food contaminats) analytics. Here, the UV-SERS enhancement potential of various kinds of metal colloids, such as Pd, Pt, Au, Ag, Au-Ag core-shell, and Ag-Au core-shell with different shapes and sizes, were studied using melamine as a test molecule. The influence of different activation (KF, KCl, KBr, K(2)SO(4)) agents onto the SERS activity of the nanomaterials was investigated, showing that the combination of a particular nanoparticle with a special activation agent is extremely crucial for the observed SERS enhancement.

Rapid determination of sucrose in chocolate mass using near infrared spectroscopy.

This paper reports the results of a rapid method to determine sucrose in chocolate mass using near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). We applied a broad-based calibration approach, which consists in putting together in one single calibration samples of various types of chocolate mass. This approach increases the concentration range for one or more compositional parameters, improves the model performance and requires just one calibration model for several recipes.