Component identification in food samples

A good knowledge of the composition of food is key to identify food fraud. One of the fingerprinting elements in food is the lipidome, which refers to the totality of lipids in cells. The principal drawback to a fully description of the lipidome of food is the low concentration of certain components, like phospholipids, which are crucial to detect food fraud in olive oil samples due to the small amount of that kind of lipids in comparison to seeds oil, which are 300-400 times more concentrated. (1) Nowadays, several efforts have been done in the field of component identification, such as the research of new techniques for solid phase extraction (i.e.  Graphitized Carbon Black) for the enrichment of phospholipids, followed by a later identification of components using High-Resolution Mass Spectroscopy methods and devoted software aimed for lipid identification. (2) 

1. A. Koidis, Eur J Lipid Sci Technol., 2006, 108, 323-328. 

1. M. Antonelli, Food Chem., 2020, 25, 125860.