Food Fraud

Food fraud are increasingly common nowadays and these counterfeit foods can be produced by deliberate substituting, diluting or mislabeling of food, ingredients and packaging. Global food safety is threatened as the consumption of these food may lead to severe health issues (e.g. melamine in infant milk).
Direct and simple spectroscopic methods such as FTIR spectroscopy could be used to detect some of such counterfeit food. However, for food-producing companies who are trying to cheat the system, to detect and reveal such cases would require more advanced techniques like MS. Food authentication and traceability are also achievable with these analytical techniques.