Recent advances in nanomaterials-based electrochemical and optical sensing approaches for detection of food dyes in food samples: A comprehensive overview

Abstract

In today’s world, the stability and affordability of food colorants have caused to attracted considerable attention in the food industry. Food dyes attract the appearance of food by increasing color of that while the harmful effect of these dyes on living organs is undeniable. Synthetic food colors are becoming more common than natural ones via food manufacturers to achieve specific features like high color intensity, low cost, improved appearance, more color uniformity and stability. Varied beverages and foods obtainable in the market might contain synthetic color, which in turn leads to serious health issues such as cancers, mutations, allergic reactions, and reduced hemoglobin concentrations. Thereby, WHO (World Health Organization) highlight the required control of food dyes in food. Up to now, several analytical methods have been developed for different food dyes determination in various food matrixes. On the other hand, the performance of conventional detection platforms has been limited due to many limitations including time consuming and lack of sensitivity. Recently, cost-efficiency, sensitivity and reproducibility of electro-analytical and optico-analytical approaches have led to the development of many of them for food dyes quantification. The nanoprobes have demonstrated satisfactory results in terms of sensitivity and cost. A review of new kinds of nanoprobe consisting of carbon-based, silica-based and metallic-based composites with nanoscale size might open up new opportunities towards the investigation of colorants in food samples by developing a sensor with better analytical performance. Therefore, we attempted to summarize the recent progress of electrochemical and optical sensors in diverse matrices and show how nanoprobes could increase the performance of these approaches.