Recent applications of NMR in food and dietary studies

Abstract

Over the last decade, a wide variety of new foods have been introduced into the global marketplace, many with health benefits that exceed those of traditional foods. Simultaneously, a wide range of analytical technologies has evolved that allow greater capability for the determination of food composition. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), traditionally a research tool used for structural elucidation, is now being used frequently for metabolomics and chemical fingerprinting. Its stability and inherent ease of quantification have been exploited extensively to identify and quantify bioactive components in foods and dietary supplements. In addition, NMR fingerprints have been used to differentiate cultivars, evaluate sensory properties of food and investigate the influence of growing conditions on food crops. Here we review the latest applications of NMR in food analysis. Published 2016. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy in Food Science: A Comprehensive Review

“…Although initial NMR applications in foods were limited to low resolution NMR analysis of moisture, at the end of the 20th century, NMR started involving high‐resolution studies of liquid and solid state matrices for several purposes. These included authentication and classification (Dais, Hatzakis, ; Marcone et al., ; Spyros & Dais, ), quality control (Marcone et al., ), sensory evaluation (Malmendal et al., ), structural characterization and compositional analysis (Bertocchi & Paci, ; Cheng & Neiss, ; Spyros & Dais, , ; Vlahov, ), understanding molecular mechanisms and interactions of food components (Fernandes, Brás, Mateus, & Freitas, ; Leydet et al., ; Tiziani, Schwartz, & Vodovotz, ), as well as the investigation of nutritional approaches to health (Ramakrishnan & Luthria, ). The reasons for the emergence of NMR‐related food applications were the development of powerful multinuclear/multidimensional and solvent suppression NMR techniques, as well as advances in NMR hardware, including cryoprobes, high‐throughput technologies, and user‐friendly software.…”

“…. (Bertocchi & Paci, 2008;Cheng & Neiss, 2012;Spyros & Dais, 2009Vlahov, 1999), understanding molecular mechanisms and interactions of food components (Fernandes, Brás, Mateus, & Freitas, 2015;Leydet et al, 2012;Tiziani, Schwartz, & Vodovotz, 2008), as well as the investigation of nutritional approaches to health (Ramakrishnan & Luthria, 2017). The reasons for the emergence of NMR-related food applications were the development of powerful multinuclear/multidimensional and solvent suppression NMR techniques, as well as advances in NMR hardware, including cryoprobes, high-throughput technologies, and user-friendly software.…”

Solid-state NMR characterization of triacylglycerol and polysaccharides in coffee beans

“…The signals marked with an asterisk (*) in Figure (d) are likely the polysaccharides that constitute the cell walls of coffee beans, which indicates that the cell walls were not destroyed during the hexane treatment. On the other hand, the 13 C NMR signals of TAG in the dried residue (Figure 4 (d)) were relatively low compared to those of the RCBs and SCGs (Figure 3), suggesting that the TAGs were mostly extracted by the hexane treatments, but a small amount of TAG remained. The sharpness of the peaks in 1 H MAS NMR and 13 C DD-MAS NMR spectra (Figure 4 (a) and 4 (c)) indicated the uniformity of extracted lipids from SCGs, and a high level of similarity with the commercial triacylglycerol sample (Supporting Figure S3 and Table S2) demonstrated the high purity of the TAG.…”

“…Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is an effective and non-destructive analytical tool to identify the structure and dynamics of molecules [13][14][15]. Solution NMR analysis of the extracts of roasted coffee beans (RCBs) and green coffee beans (GCBs) has been used to analyze the structure of organic compounds and investigate their metabolomics to classify beans from different geographic regions [16,17].…”

“…This would lead to a deeper understanding of how lipids extracted from SCGs can be used as raw materials to generate biodiesel oil. Therefore, we investigated the structures of TAG and polysaccharides from GCBs, RCBs and SCGs using 1 H and 13 C solid-state MAS NMR techniques.…”