Investigating Food Quality Evaluation: Complete Analysis of Aroma Compounds and Metabolites in Food

Introduction

There are a wide variety of methods of ensuring food quality evaluation, and which method is used depends on the food type and purpose of examination. An evaluation method widely implemented in recent years has been to analyze all various compounds present in food, then to use multivariate analysis to find trends in these compounds that can be linked to food quality. Much research is being conducted into the measurement of all aroma compounds and metabolites present in food, using these results as an indicator of food qualities such as flavor, functionality, and deterioration. This Application News presents the results of an experiment that set out to measure aroma compounds and metabolites present in sake, and investigated which of these compounds could be used to distinguish between different sake types. Three commercially available sakes, including a normal quality sake (futsu- shu), a sake made with rice and malted rice (junmai- shu), and sake made with the rice polished to at least 50 % (daiginjo-shu), were analyzed for aroma compounds and metabolites. The main compounds found in these sakes were then identified and analyzed further. We were able to clearly separate a pattern of detected compounds in these three types of sake. Combining this method of quality control with conventional methods such as sensory evaluation will allow for the collection of more precise and revealing quality control data.

May 15, 2016 GMT