Current and Future Trends in Chemical Analysis of Food: Techniques and Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Food is necessary for life, growth, survival, and normal body function. In addition, a healthy diet helps to protect against malnutrition in all its forms, as well as non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer. However, the rising food demand has led producers and consumers to search for alternative food sources with high nutritional or potential prophylactic or therapeutic value. Nevertheless, food products may never be completely safe.

The additives, contaminants and reaction by-products of oxidation, Maillard and caramelisation\browning reactions play a pivotal role in food quality and toxicity, and there is a multitude of food problems that pose adverse risks to the human condition. Therefore, the analytical tools used in analysing food products are an important and growing issue that adversely impairs human health and well-being.

This Special Issue aims to present the current analytical techniques used to analyse food products, their structure and quality. In addition, it focuses on the trends and novel approaches in the field of separation, quantification and characterisation methods for analysing any substance or microorganism in food.

The quality of the obtained data is also a vital issue that supports the justification of the legislation or regulations regarding the consumption of food. Due to the complexity of food matrices, the quantification of different compounds requires advanced sample preparation technologies coupled with advanced hyphenate instrumentation.

These techniques range from non-invasive and non-destructive techniques, such as spectroscopic techniques, imaging techniques, machine vision, and electronic noses, to emerging areas, such as nanotechnology and biosensors, including those that are already well-established in food analysis, such as chromatographic and electrophoretic techniques, and other tools for solving problems in chemical and biological analysis, such as mass spectrometry and molecular-based techniques.

I hope you consider participating in this Special Issue.

Dr. Cristina Almeida
Dr. Cristina M. L. Carvalho
Dr. Vasco Branco
Guest Editors

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