Trends and Suggestions in Improving Authenticity and Traceability of Foods of Plant Origin
Consumers’ purchasing motives are linked to their financial status, use-by-dates, product composition, the origin of foods but also food safety or nutritional characteristics such as nutritional contribution to diet, risks of allergens, ecological, ethical, religious factors and others. Few analytical techniques can be used to verify the authenticity of related claims. In practice, very few techniques can allow the geographical origin of food to be verified. Administrative monitoring techniques are mainly used and currently the bar code seems to be the most promising. From an analytical chemistry point of view, only plant or animal-derived ingredients used to prepare the food can be precisely determined. This chapter aims at providing an insight into research regarding the development of analytical techniques not yet widely used by the industry or for inspection purposes to determine food constituent species or the geographical origin of food, covering microbial ecology using PCR techniques and/or genomic analyses, metabolomics, isotopic techniques, Near Infrared Spectrometric techniques, aptasensors and electronic noses.
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