A systematic account of food adulteration and recent trends in the non-destructive analysis of food fraud detection

Food safety and authenticity have become a serious concern among consumers worldwide. Economically motivated practices of food fraud can have widespread implications for public health and reduce the overall food quality. As such, there is a rapidly increasing requirement for more sensitive and accurate methods to detect deliberate adulteration of food commodities. An attempt to summarize the present status of adulterated foods, the most common adulterants used, and the non-destructive methods to detect food fraud, has been made in this review article. The techniques and modern methods of food adulteration detection including NIR, FTIR, Raman spectroscopy, NMR, e-nose/e-tongue, and LIBS have been discussed. The methods of qualitative and quantitative data analysis have a significant role in the determination of process efficiency and as such a comprehensive knowledge of the process and recent applications discussed in the review would be of high interest to solve food adulteration problems.

Automated summary

Food safety and authenticity are major concerns for consumers worldwide. To combat economically motivated food fraud, there is a growing demand for more sensitive and accurate methods of detecting deliberate adulteration. This review article provides an overview of the current state of adulterated foods, common adulterants, and non-destructive detection methods.