Selective Methods to Investigate Authenticity and Geographical Origin of Mediterranean Food Products

Abstract

The Mediterranean diet is promoted as one of the healthiest and closely linked to socioecological practices, knowledge and traditions, promoting sustainable food production, and linking geographical origin with food quality and ecosystem services. Consumer adherence to this dietary pattern drives increased consumption of authentic "premium" foods, such as Iberian pig meat and dry-cured ham from Portugal and Spain, argan oil from Morocco, "Djebel" lamb from Tunisia and truffles from Italy and Slovenia, i.e., food products that respond to current ethical, environmental and socially sustainable demands. Geographical indication and appellation of origin can increase traditional food products competitiveness, but the high-value recognition of these products can also lead to economically motivated product adulteration. It is therefore imperative to protect the high added value of these unique food products by ensuring their quality, authenticity, provenance and sustainable production systems. In this review, we provide a critical evaluation of the analytical methods that are currently used for the determination of provenance and authenticity of these Mediterranean products as well as possible strategies for improving the throughput and affordability of the methods discussed.

Fatty Acid Composition of Cosmetic Argan Oil: Provenience and Authenticity Criteria

“…Recently, the group led by Fouad investigated the use of stable isotope ratios of carbon ( 13 C/ 12 C) and oxygen ( 18 O/ 16 O) to authenticate argan oil from different Moroccan co-operatives (PGI certified) from five provenances in the southwest part of Morocco [ 8 ]. Although their study shows that the use of stable isotopes is an efficient tool for the verification of provenance, other analytical variables such as multi-element profiles, spectroscopic fingerprinting and chemical profiling are needed to improve classification accuracy [ 9 ]. Fatty acid profiling, when combined with various chemometric tools, has been successfully applied to discriminate the geographical origin of vegetable oils including olive oil [ 10 , 11 ], pumpkin oil [ 10 , 12 ] and Sativa oils [ 13 ].…”

Fraud in Animal Origin Food Products: Advances in Emerging Spectroscopic Detection Methods over the Past Five Years

“…Over the last few years, several review papers have been published focusing on either one of the authenticity issues, such as the geographical origin [ 25 , 26 ] or species [ 27 ]; or one category of food products of animal origin, such as fish [ 7 , 8 ], meat [ 28 , 29 ], or honey [ 30 ]. Other papers have reviewed one specific type of analytical method, such as multielement and stable isotype techniques [ 11 ], volatilomics [ 31 ], DNA-based methods [ 32 , 33 ], or infrared spectroscopy [ 34 ].…”

Can We Discover Truffle’s True Identity?

“…Although stable isotopes and elemental fingerprinting has become increasingly important in establishing the authenticity and geographical origin of food products [16], to date, it has not been applied to truffles [17]. Studies where the stable isotope techniques have been applied were orientated towards investigating carbon isotope fractionation during sucrose decomposition [18], the ecophysiological relationship between truffles, soil and host plants [19], or assessing the mycorrhizal versus the saprophytic status of fungi using the natural abundance of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes [20].…”