Quality Assurance of Foods and Functional Ingredients Using Quantitative NMR Methods and Chemometrics

One of the greatest challenges facing the functional food and Natural Health Products (NHPs) industries is sourcing high quality functional ingredients for their finished products. Increasingly consumers are demanding full transparency for the products they consume regarding their quality, source and how they are made. Unfortunately, the lack of ingredient standards, modernized analytical methodologies and industry oversight creates the potential for low quality and in some cases deliberate adulteration of ingredients. DNA barcoding has emerged as one tool but its suitability for processed foods and functional ingredients has not been established. Due to its excellent quantitative properties, NMR spectroscopy is increasingly being used as an innovative solution to warrant the quality and safety of processed foods and manufactured functional ingredients. The NRC has been partnering with the industry to develop alternative analytical methods to capture the complex chemical composition of raw materials and extracts into a “chemical barcode”. Supported by statistical methodologies, a non-directed chemical approach to evaluate ingredients quality provide a key advantage in the ability to detect and quantitate in the same analysis, the presence of both the expected bioactives as well as any potential adulterants that are presumed to be absent. This presentation will introduce these concepts and show their application to a diverse range of extracts and foods (more than 200 ingredients) illustrating how quantitative NMR spectroscopy and chemometrics are being used to classify and improve the quality assurance of these products.