Editorial

Abstract

In recent decades, consumers have moved their attention from the hedonistic and basic survival finalities of food to other important aspects related to nutrition, such as quality, safety and various potential health benefits. It is well known that food labels must report the quantities of the most common food constituents (protein, carbohydrates, water, etc.); it must be emphasized, however, that the names and amounts of hazardous constituents, not reported on the label (viz., contaminants of various origin), are certainly of higher interest. In this respect, increasingly stringent government regulations have been introduced, following occasional outbreaks of a series of illegal and highly dangerous food contaminations of different nature. Current-day legislation is directed toward every step of the food production change, and aims to guarantee food traceability, quality and very low contaminant levels. Unfortunately, it must be noted that the introduction and exploitation of novel analytical techniques, in official methods, is still a rather complicated issue. It is also true, however, that such a radical change, in the general public and institutional attitudes, has acted as a stimulant toward considerable progress in the development of analytical methods, both in academic and in industrial areas. Scientific instrumentation manufacturers have also devoted a great deal of research and resources to the food research field. The great attention of the separation science community, directed to the food analysis field, is documented in the present special issue of Journal of Separation Science. Modern analytical techniques enable a full comprehension of the factors that determine food characteristics, and ideally, the production of chemically and microbiologically safe, nutritious and good-tasting products. Column chromatography, combined with an adequate detection system, is the most efficient analytical approach that a food analyst can employ. The articles reported herein demonstrate the importance of such methodologies for present-day and future food research and control. A series of contributions, describing high-performance liquid chromatographic and capillary electrophoretic applications, are focused on the determination of non-volatile constituents such as proteins (in maize), carotenoids, wine polyphenols and triacylglycerols. Moreover, the analysis of pesticide contaminants, a major issue which requires sensitive and selective sample preparation – analyte separation methods, in order to guarantee food safety, is the topic of work directed toward widely consumed vegetable products. Interesting studies on the migration of bisphenol-A from baby bottles, determined through stir bar sorptive extraction GC-MS, and on the presence of the antibiotic cloramphenicol, in marine and land animal products, are also reported. The highly selective nature of tandem MS detection is highlighted in a series of valid investigations on mulberry-derived extracts, proteins, flavonoids and various contaminants. In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that food matrices characterized by hundreds or even thousands of volatiles, belonging to many chemical groups, are very common. Consequently, in single-column GC food applications, volatiles frequently overlap and a multidimensional approach must be considered. Comprehensive two-dimensional GC × GC is the most powerful GC method available today and is gaining a firm foothold within the chromatographic community. Two examples of GC × GC, employed in food analysis, are described in this special issue: in one, GC × GC-MS reveals the very high complexity of the dried mate profile, while in the other, GC × GC, after an HPLC pre-separation step, is used for the analysis of Ukrainian sunflower oil contaminated with mineral oil. As editors of this Food Analysis special issue, we would like to thank all the authors for their valid contributions, the reviewers for the time they spent in the evaluation of the articles, and to those of Journal of Separation Science who provided their support during the preparation of this issue. We would also like to thank Dr. Koni Grob for the excellent perspective, focused on present-day analytical food control, that follows the present editorial.