Comparative Assessment of the Mineral Content of a Latin American Raw Sausage Made by Traditional or Non-Traditional Processes

Abstract

Mineral content of food in general, and of meat and meat products in particular, has been widely studied mainly due to its essential role in human nutrition and implication on safeness issues, i.e., mineral toxicity and deficiencies. Furthermore, since a few decades ago, instrumental analytical techniques based on atomic absorption or emission spectrometry applied to the determination of the mineral content coupled to multivariate statistical analysis have been proved to produce suitable methods to characterise food products, discriminate between food quality categories and control food authenticity, i.e., determination of the geographical origin of food, discrimination between cultivation methods (e.g. organic vs convenience crops), varieties of fruits and vegetables, or food processing practices (Grembecka et al., 2007; Kelly & Bateman, 2010; Luykx & van Ruth, 2008; Sun et al., 2011). Inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) is a prevailing instrumental technique utilised for the simultaneous determination of a considerably high number of metals and some non-metals in biological samples at ppm or ppb levels. As well as in AES conventional techniques, in ICP-AES technique, analyte atoms in solution are aspirated into the excitation region where they are desolvated, vaporised, and atomised, and finally the optical emission measurement from excited atoms is used to determine analyte concentration. However, ICP-AES provides higher reproducibility and quantitative linear range compared to conventional AES, and reduces molecular interferences due to a higher temperature (7000–8000 K) in the excitation source (plasma). On the other hand, ICP-AES is more expensive than conventional AES, and in complex samples emission patters can be of difficult interpretation (Ibanez & Cifuentes, 2001; Luykx & van Ruth, 2008). There is a wide variety of meat products all over the world and, among them, fresh sausages represent an important part. Two types of fresh sausages can be found in shops or markets: emulsion-type and minced comminuted meat products. Fresh sausages are sold without having suffered any heat treatment, and they are generally stored and commercialised