Abstract

QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF ADULTERANTS IN FOOD BY ANALYTICAL TECHNIQUES-AN OVERVIEW

R. Karthik, R. Jasmin Sajini*, Divya D., Jerald Lourd Raj L.J. and A. Janani

ABSTRACT

Food is the third essential complex chemical group for the human body is to provide energy, growth development, and nourishment for the basic physiologic function of the body. Food has two major functions which provide nutrition promote health and prevent disease. The nutritional diet should be in a balanced proportion to the physiologic function of the body. As food is a basic need of life, adulteration becomes a major problem in globalization. Adulteration is an illegal process in which a sub-standard substance, low nutritive value, or low-grade substance is added intentionally or unintentionally which diminishes the quality and value of the product. High consumption of adulterated drugs can also lead to serious health issues. To avoid these problems advanced analytical technologies like Spectrophotometric methods, chromatographic methods, Electro kinetic methods, DNA fingerprinting methods, and barcoding methods using specific biomarkers and chemo metrics for the determination of adulteration in the food supplements are discussed here in the review article for various categories of food.

Keywords: Adulterant, Analytical methods, Food, Spectroscopy, Chromatography, DNA fingerprinting.