Abstract
Ascertaining the authenticity of the unrefined sesame oil presents an ongoing challenge. Here, the determination of 2-propenal was performed by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) under mild temperature coupled to gas chromatography with time-of-flight mass spectrometry, enabling the detection of adulteration of unrefined sesame oil with refined corn or soybean oil. Employing this coupled technique, 2-propenal was detected in all tested refined corn and soybean oils but not in any of the tested unrefined sesame oil samples. Using response surface methodology, the optimum extraction temperature, equilibrium time, and extraction time for the HS-SPME analysis of 2-propenal using carboxen/polydimethylsiloxane fiber were determined to be 55°C, 15 min, and 15 min, respectively, for refined corn oil and 55°C, 25 min, and 15 min, respectively, for refined soybean oil. Under these optimized conditions, the adulteration of unrefined sesame oil with refined corn or soybean oils (1–5%) was successfully detected. The detection and quantification limits of 2-propenal were found to be in the range of 0.008–0.010 and 0.023–0.031 µg mL−1, respectively. The overall results demonstrate the potential of this novel method for the authentication of unrefined sesame oil.
Highlights
Unrefined sesame oil has long been considered as a popular health food due to its considerable content of bioactive compounds such as phytosterols and lignans
The volatile compounds found only in corn and soybean oils were selected as markers for the detection of sesame oil adulteration
The results show that the predicted quadratic polynomial models provide a good fit to the experimental data, exhibiting relatively high values for the coefficient of determination (R2 ) of 0.83 and 0.98 for corn and soybean oils, respectively (Table 2)
Summary
Unrefined sesame oil has long been considered as a popular health food due to its considerable content of bioactive compounds such as phytosterols and lignans. It is most commonly consumed as a nutritive flavor enhancer in many. The retail price of unrefined sesame oil in Korea is 5 to 30 times higher than that of other refined edible oils. The economically motivated adulteration of sesame oil, with potential impact on the oil quality, nutritional value, and safety to consumers, is a critical problem. Adulterated sesame oils are most commonly manufactured by blending pure unrefined sesame oil with cheaper and lower quality edible oils such as refined corn and soybean oils [4, 5]
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