Food fraud is the act of intentionally diluting, substituting, or altering a food product at any point along the farm-to-table process to turn a profit. While food fraud includes diluting food products such as honey and olive oil with cheaper ingredients, it can also include broader acts of purposeful altering such as using GMOs.
Food authenticity is essential not only to ensure the consumers buying these foods are getting what they pay for but also to assure the foods that are being consumed by these buyers are safe for consumption.
How is food altered for profit?
A person committing food fraud will do so by:
Using unapproved additives or enhancements
Misbranding the food product
Counterfeiting the food product
Contaminating the food product with chemicals or other biological agents
Substituting one food product for another product
The goal of food fraud is to increase the food product's apparent value (as is the case with meat product or olive oil ) or to reduce the cost of the product's production (as is the case with honey) to earn more money off the product. In some cases, tampering with the ingredients of a food product may be done with malicious intent to hurt others.
How can benchtop NMR spectrometers help with food authenticity?
Food fraud is a growing problem that has resulted in the decreased price of many food products for producers and farmers. Unfortunately, despite the importance of food authenticity, about 41% of food companies have no systems in place to detect food fraud. This may because, to fight food fraud, food companies need to provide many different analytical and informatics solutions to detect any potential adulterations along the farm-to-table process.
The good news is that benchtop NMR spectrometers offer an affordable way to detect food fraud. Benchtop spectrometers can provide easy and automated ways for food companies, farmers, and producers to ensure the authenticity of a food product.
Why use benchtop spectrometers?
Benchtop spectrometers offer simple, repeatable, and operator-independent sample preparation. They're also automatable with optional NMR interpretation software that can be customized for easy data acquisition and processing by lab technicians. There's no calibration standard necessary, and the time it takes to conduct measurements are one-third of the time that's required with other traditional methods of chromatography.
Ready to get started with benchtop NMR for food authenticity? Contact Nanalysis today for more information about our benchtop NMR spectrometers.