Instrumental Food Analysis

The instrumental analysis of foods is an important step in food processing and manufacturing companies because of the presence and interactions of various compounds in foods during storage and processing. While traditional methods are still used, most analysis involves the use of different instruments. This chapter is structured to provide a description of the information each technique can provide, a simple explanation of how it works and examples of its application, and facilitates comparison of techniques. The focus of this chapter is on spectroscopic, chromatographic and electrophoretic methods, including specific examples of instruments such as capillary electrophoresis, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), atomic absorption, emission and inductively coupled plasma, fluorescence spectroscopies, gel electrophoresis, etc., among many others. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015.