Food Metabolomics
Food Metabolomics
Metabolomics is all about the study of small molecules and it could be applied to the food industry to investigate and understand more about food and plants, its safety, quality, nutrition and more. Some notable applications include its use to (1) fully characterize food, (2) identify adulterants, contaminants and spoilage, (3) understand how growing conditions and location affect the quality of produce, and (4) find out how processing and transport in the supply chain will change food. Food metabolomics can be achieved using targeted and untargeted approaches with analytical techniques such as Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS and GC-MS/MS).
Sensory test methods that present flavor and taste in numerical terms are widely used techniques for the quantitative evaluation of food quality. Recently, attempts have been made to obtain a greater amount of data by combining the results of sensory tests with metabolomics data that provides a comprehensive analysis of food constituents. Combining comprehensive analytical data with use of multivariate analysis has become an effective option for elucidating the differences in a wide range of constituents. This combination of multivariate analysis and metabolomics promises to see application in areas of quality evaluation and quality improvement, as well as in the development of foods with improved functional properties.
