Chapter 14 Analysis of carbohydrates in food and beverages by HPLC and CE

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter presents an analysis of carbohydrates in food and beverages using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and capillary electrophoresis (CE). The need for high-quality control of food products, the increased requirements from regulatory agencies, and the increasing demand of consumers for detailed information on food's contents are the driving factors for the rapidly and explosively increasing desire for food analysis. Because carbohydrates are one of the major components in foods, their analysis is essential. Glucose, fructose, sucrose, and some sugar alcohols—such as sorbitol, mannitol and inositol—are widely distributed in the vegetable kingdom. Their concentrations in vegetables and fruits are characteristic and influenced by factors such as maturity and storage conditions. Because carbohydrates are nonvolatile compounds, the most commonly used technique for their analysis is HPLC. Over the past two decades, HPLC has been extensively used in the separation and isolation of carbohydrate species, and a number of HPLC methods have been applied for the analyses of a wide variety of carbohydrates in various foods. CE is a powerful separation technique that provides high-resolution high-efficiency separations.