Foodomics and Food Safety: Where We Are

Abstract

SummaryThe power of foodomics as a discipline that is now broadly used for quality assurance of food products and adulteration identifi cation, as well as for determining the safety of food, is presented. Concerning sample preparation and application, maintenance of highly sophisticated instruments for both high-performance and high-throughput techniques, and analysis and data interpretation, special att ention has to be paid to the development of skilled analysts. The obtained data shall be integrated under a strong bioinformatics environment. Modern mass spectrometry is an extremely powerful analytical tool since it can provide direct qualitative and quantitative information about a molecule of interest from only a minute amount of sample. Quality of this information is infl uenced by the sample preparation procedure, the type of mass spectrometer used and the analyst's skills. Technical advances are bringing new instruments of increased sensitivity, resolution and speed to the market. Other methods presented here give additional information and can be used as complementary tools to mass spectrometry or for validation of obtained results. Genomics and transcriptomics, as well as affi nity-based methods, still have a broad use in food analysis. Serious drawbacks of some of them, especially the affi nity-based methods, are the cross-reactivity between similar molecules and the infl uence of complex food matrices. However, these techniques can be used for pre-screening in order to reduce the large number of samples. Great progress has been made in the application of bioinformatics in foodomics. These developments enabled processing of large amounts of generated data for both identifi cation and quantifi cation, and for corresponding modeling.

Sample preparation in foodomic analyses

“…They are equally important in metabolomics, lipidomics, peptidomics, proteomics, and genomics, no matter what the analyte of interest is—metabolite, contaminant, and biopolymers, as large and complex molecules. It has to be taken into consideration that the changes introduced into the sample at this phase cannot be corrected in the following steps . The division of labor between those who control sampling and sample preparation and those who work in the following steps such as methods based on affinity, MS, and NMR spectrometry , or other newly introduced methods in food analysis such as confocal scanning microscopy or calorimetry , can result in serious data quality issues, due to the lack of accountability and management of the data generated and lack of standardization .…”

Foodomics and storage monitoring of three meat cuts by 1H NMR

“…The latter seeks a holistic understanding of food analysis focusing on food safety and quality, and gives protection to consumers against adulteration. Though this research topic has grown considerably, the term foodomics was first used in 2009, by Cifuentes, who defined it as a “ discipline that studies the Food and Nutrition domains through the application of omics technologies .”…”

“…The most widely used technique to carry out foodomics is mass spectrometry (MS), which has been identified as the most powerful analytical instrument for obtaining qualitative and quantitative information. However, other techniques have gained acceptance in foodomics, among them is nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) …”

“…Though this research topic has grown considerably, the term foodomics was first used in 2009, by Cifuentes, who defined it as a "discipline that studies the Food and Nutrition domains through the application of omics technologies." 7,8 A Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) search points to increasing interest in foodomics as observed in Figure 1, even overcoming the traditional methodologies like genomics and proteomics.…”

“…However, other techniques have gained acceptance in foodomics, among them is nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). 8 Nuclear magnetic resonance is less sensitive than MS and requires greater sample quantities, while MS offers a better limit of detection (LOD) than NMR. However, NMR is a versatile, reproducible, nondestructive technique that can be applied to both liquid and solid matrices without derivatization and without reliance on ionizing steps or on column conditioning.…”