Foodomics: A new tool to differentiate between organic and conventional foods

Abstract

The demand for organic food is increasing annually due to the growing consumer trend for more natural products that have simpler ingredient lists, involve less processing and are grown free of pesticides. However, there is still not enough nutritional evidence in favor of organic food consumption. Classical chemical analysis of macro- and micronutrients has demonstrated that organic crops are poorer in nitrogen, but clear evidence for other nutrients is lacking. Omics technologies forming part of the new discipline of foodomics have allowed the detection of possible nutritional differences between organic and conventional production, although many results remain controversial and contradictory. The main focus of this review is to provide an overview of the studies that use foodomics techniques as a tool to differentiate between organic and conventional production.

Recent advances in the application of capillary electromigration methods for food analysis and Foodomics

“…Moreover, food quality validation as well as the evaluation of other biological properties of foods imply the use of robust, efficient, sensitive, and cost‐effective analytical methodologies. CE has been applied to analyze a huge number of food matrices related to either food analysis or Foodomics , as can be also confirmed by the information given in Table . Thus, due to its high separation efficiency and speed, together with the extremely small sample and reagents requirements, CE has demonstrated to be a very useful analytical tool in food science.…”

“…Thus, due to its high separation efficiency and speed, together with the extremely small sample and reagents requirements, CE has demonstrated to be a very useful analytical tool in food science. Table summarizes the main review papers published within the period covered by this work on capillary electrodriven techniques in food analysis and Foodomics . As can be seen, recent applications of CE‐MS in metabolomics or recent developments in CE‐MS , as well as detection schemes for CE , chiral methods , concentration procedures , and miniaturized CE systems have been recently reviewed.…”

“…Thus, the use of different analytical techniques in Foodomics has been reviewed including the use of Foodomics imaging by MS and NMR and the application of direct high‐resolution mass spectrometry in Foodomics . Some other works have reviewed the application of Foodomics to differentiate organic and conventional foods , for exploring safety, quality and bioactivity of foods , in microbiological investigations and for investigations of food toxins .…”

Sample preparation in foodomic analyses

“…As already mentioned earlier, genomic and transcriptomic technologies are also applied for analysis and detection of transgenic foods , determination of food origin, tracing of food adulterations , and contaminations during food transport and manipulation . In this kind of analyses, general rules for sample preparations in genomics are applied , see also Table . Newest trends in this field are characterized by tendencies toward the development of high‐throughput analyses and miniaturization.…”

A Targeted Approach by High Resolution Mass Spectrometry to Reveal New Compounds in Raisins

“…High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is one of the most commonly applied methods to identify and quantify polyphenols in food [17], and UV/vis and DAD detectors are more frequently used than mass spectrometry (MS) because they are less expensive, comparably convenient to operate, and suitable for routine analysis [18]. However, HPLC coupled with MS allows a more accurate identification [17] and increases the range of phenolic compounds detected in a sample [19].…”