Food Adulteration

Protect consumers from fraud and health risks with isotopic analyzers to detect adulteration of food and beverages.

Economic adulteration, where premium products are diluted with cheap alternatives, is becoming increasingly common. Not only does this defraud consumers but it can introduce dangerous chemical impurities into the supply chain. 

Now you can combat the practice with on-the-spot isotope analysis from Picarro. Stable carbon isotope ratios can, for example, easily identify corn and cane sugars that have been illicitly added to foods and drinks. Stable oxygen and hydrogen isotope ratios can identify the source of water added to a juice product, telling when and where it was bottled.

Picarro’s integrated CRDS solutions have simplified isotope analysis and made it uniquely accessible to the industrial QA/QC department. Measurements can now be made by customs and excise teams, shippers and receivers, anywhere in the food chain—all with unprecedented efficiency and economy.

Research Applications

CRDS for honey adulteration

DAkkS German Accreditation Body permits Intertek Food Services GmbH to use CRDS for honey adulteration. See Section 1.3, page 4 of the certificate. 

Testing beverages for region of origin

Measuring oxygen and hydrogen stable isotope ratios of the water of beverages can yield information on their point of origin. In this paper, the authors analyzed beer, sodas, juices and milk. They used a Picarro isotopic water analyzer and tested the samples ‘as-is’, without any processing, which is a tremendous saving in time and per-sample cost.

Get more from the paper: Analysis of the hydrogen and oxygen stable isotope ratios of beverage waters without prior water extraction using isotope ratio infrared spectroscopy.