Food and dietary supplements analysis

Dietary supplements are broad group of products which are freely available for consumers. The quality control authority State institution for drug control (SUKL) is not obligatory to control the quality of dietary supplements. Czech Government authority requires only health and medical safety of dietary preparations. Insufficient control of dietary supplements might be abused by producers and thus consumer might sometimes buy products of much lower quality than declared. Due to the high prices of these supplements it is necessary to guarantee at least basic control of quality and content of declared substances responsible for biological activity. HPLC and GC techniques are the methods of choice in analysis of dietary supplements. Besides dietary supplements, also some food matrices are analyzed in ACG. Especially compounds from the group of antioxidants and vitamins are receiving special attention. In case of complex matrices, thorough sample preparation prior to analysis is needed. The importance of food quality control was demonstrated during methanolic affair in Czech Republic in 2012.

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Analysis of alcoholic beverage (pear brandy - Hruškovice) by GC method. The values close above the limit amount was found for methanol and isopamylalcohol. The amount of ethanol was 52%.

The favorite food quality control method in ACG is an UHPLC—MS/MS method for the determination of catechins in tea samples. Catechins belong among important antioxidant compounds. Therefore they are indicators of the quality of tea or catechins containing drinks. The method is very fast, enabling to distinguish and quantify all eight catechins in slightly more than 2 minutes. The method is appreciated by students during practical training lessons for both speed and practical method applicability.

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Ultra-fast UHPLC-MS/MS analysis of catechins in tea infusion. The structure of the most potent catechin epigallocatechin gallate is shown as an example.

 

 

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