Abstract
When aiming to assess the fat composition of commercial potato chip products, their diversity and the difficulties to verify the nutritional label of batches of chips by official methods are main challenges. Thus, the possibility of using alternative technologies is of great interest for both the industry and the public administration. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a rapid and non-destructive technique that has been proven useful in different applications in the food industry. However, suitable specific treatments of compositional references with NIRS methods have been until now very scarce in the literature. The nutritional label information is commonly given as percentage content values across several nutritional categories. This formally corresponds with the class of so-called compositional data, for which there are specific statistical methods. This study contributes to ongoing research on the feasibility of Vis/NIR spectroscopy for food nutritional labelling. In particular, a calibration model is formulated to estimate the relative content of fat in potato chips products based on NIR spectral signal that integrates a consistent statistical treatment of the nutritional reference data. The method provides accurate estimates of the fat composition, with this including saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated types of fat, as well as their total fat percentage (cross-validated overall R2 = 0.88 and R2 = 0.82 from ground and fragmented samples respectively) and shows its potential for both nutritional labelling and verification in a rapid and inexpensive manner.
Highlights
Nutritional label information typically comprises numerical values referring to the contents across a number of classes of nutritional components
The potato chips products included in the present study had a fatty acid composition mainly associated with sunflower oil
This study adds further evidence about the feasibility of using Vis/NIR spectroscopy for the assessment of nutritional contents in nutritional labels of commercial foodstuff products
Summary
Nutritional label information typically comprises numerical values referring to the contents across a number of classes of nutritional components. In the European Union, it is compulsory since December 2016 and the published standard (CE 2011) settles the duty for the producers to provide nutritional information as part of the food information to the consumer. It is important to verify the compliance of imported products with the established nutritional labelling rules. The nutritional information includes total fat contents, saturated fatty acids (SFA), carbohydrates, sugars, proteins and salt; as well as energy value. The information on other nutrients, such as monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA), polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), trans-fatty acids, vitamins, and other healthy compounds, is voluntary according to the standard.
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