Vibrational spectroscopy and chemometrics to assess authenticity, adulteration and intrinsic quality parameters of edible oils and fats

Edible oils and fats are one of the foods most frequently counterfeited in many countries. Therefore, monitoring the authenticity and overall quality of these products is ultimately required. Chemometric analyses, such as Partial Least Square (PLS), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Soft Independent Modeling of Class Analogy (SIMCA), and others, applied to vibrational spectroscopic data have enabled the development of methods useful to assess quality aspects (authenticity, adulteration, free fatty acids and trans content, iodine, peroxide and saponification values, and others) of edible fats and oils. The methods are potential analytical tools for industries and inspection agencies for characterization of samples during the development, processing, quality control and inspection of oils and fats. In this original review, applications of near, mid and Raman infrared spectroscopy combined with multivariate analysis to authenticate, detect adulteration and determine intrinsic quality parameters in edible fats and oils are discussed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.