Abstract
Commercially bottled birch saps (BSs) were analyzed for several nutrient (Ca, Cu, Fe, Mg, and Zn) and toxic (As, Cd, Ni, and Pb) elements using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP OES). The method was validated under the conditions of several sample preparation procedures, including a traditional digestion as well as alternative non-digestion schemes. It was found that the direct analysis of untreated BSs gives the best results, i.e., limits of detection at 0.02–5.8 ng mL−1, precision better than 5%, accuracy from 98.0% to 104.5% and determination of 12 elements in a short time (~1 min per sample). The multi-element analysis of nine commercially available bottled BSs showed that they contained mainly Mg and Ca, small quantities of Mn, Zn, Cu, and Fe, but are free from toxic elements such as As, Cd, Ni, and Pb. Additionally, the nutritional value of BSs was examined using in vitro gastro-intestinal digestion (GID) to determine the bioaccessible fraction of elements. Accordingly, bioaccessibility of nutritious ones (Ca, Cu, Fe, Mg, Zn) was <40%. Drinking daily 1 L of BSs covered <2.5% of recommended dietary intakes (RDIs) of the aforementioned elements. Only the bioaccessibility of Mn highly contributes to its RDI.
Highlights
The birch sap (BS) collected from Betula pendula species, is widely acclaimed for its nutritional, antioxidative and curative properties [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
As the main goal of this work was to develop and validate the method for multi-element analysis of BSs by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP OES) with no elaborate previous sample treatment, special attention was paid to the sample preparation step prior to spectrometric measurements
In comparison to the traditional approach based on wet digestion, it completely omitted the sample preparation step, making the proposed method simpler, cheaper, safer, and faster
Summary
The birch sap (BS) collected from Betula pendula species, is widely acclaimed for its nutritional, antioxidative and curative properties [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] It can be consumed for the whole year fresh or as a naturally fermented, refreshing and cooling, low-alcohol drink [7,8,9,10,11].
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