Determination of fat content in food
Currently, trans fatty acids (TFA) are associated with a number of diseases, especially with an increased risk of heart diseases. However, they are found in a large number of foods such as hydrogenated oils, as they improve the consistency and longevity of the food. For these reasons, countries around the world require producers to indicate the amount of TFA. Therefore, it is necessary to have a reliable, fast and robust method of analysis that will not significantly complicate production processes.
The traditionally used gas chromatography (GC) is very accurate, but it requires the isolation of fats and is relatively slow. In addition, bands of cis and trans fatty acids overlap in the GC spectra, which requires the subsequent use of an HPLC method, which is expensive and time consuming. And for these reasons, the ideal choice is the method of infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) on ATR crystal, which not only meets the requirements for accurate determination of the content of substances, but also does not require any complicated treatment or dilution. In addition, you can use TQ Analyst to create calibration methods that can be used to automate TFA analysis.
