High Performance Liquid Chromatography versus Stacking-Micellar Electrokinetic Chromatography for the Determination of Potentially Toxic Alkenylbenzenes in Food Flavouring Ingredients

Alkenylbenzenes, including eugenol, methyleugenol, myristicin, safrole, and estragole, are potentially toxic phytochemicals, which are commonly found in foods. Occurrence data in foods depends on the quality of the analytical methodologies available. Here, we developed and compared modern reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and stacking-micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) methods for the determination of the above alkenylbenzenes in food flavouring ingredients. The analytical performance of HPLC was found better than the stacking-MEKC method. Compared to other HPLC methods found in the literature, our method was faster (total run time with conditioning of 15 min) and able to separate more alkenylbenzenes. In addition, the analytical methodology combining an optimized methanol extraction and proposed HPLC was then applied to actual food flavouring ingredients. This methodology should be applicable to actual food samples, and thus will be vital to future studies in the determination of alkenylbenzenes in food.

Automated summary

In this study, modern reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and stacking-micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) methods were developed and compared for the determination of alkenylbenzenes in food flavouring ingredients. The HPLC method showed better analytical performance and faster total run time compared to the stacking-MEKC method. The developed analytical methodology was successfully applied to actual food samples, which is crucial for future studies on determining alkenylbenzenes in food.