Food Forensics

The need for reliable analytical techniques for food quality control and fraud detection has notably increased in the last few decades. There are two main aspects that are of concern: adulteration and authentication. In particular, the introduction of quality labels such as the protected denomination of origin, organic food, mountain denomination, etc. poses more challenges, since these quality attributes and their assessment is necessarily linked to the foodstuff as a whole and requires a holistic approach to food characterization. Consequently, the preferred analytical techniques are those furnishing on the one hand a complete compositional profile, such as in foodomics, and on the other hand a quick-to-acquire but unique fingerprint, such as fast non-destructive spectroscopy or other food sensors. In this respect, chemometrics is fundamental to unravelling the distinctive food traits from these complex responses or to speed up the resolution and putative identification process in hyphenated chromatographic techniques. This chapter will revise the main and most recent trends, pointing out the most relevant issues.