Food Chemistry and Food Microbiology

Advanced Food Analysis Technologies

Food analysis is the discipline dealing with the development, application, and study of analytical procedures for characterizing the properties of foods and their constituents. Food sampling is a process used to check that a food is safe and that it does not contain harmful contaminants, or that it contains only permitted additives at acceptable levels, or that it contains the right levels of key ingredients and its label declarations are correct, or to know the levels of nutrients present. In most cases with food to be analyzed, there are two levels of sampling the first being selection of a portion from the whole, which is then submitted to a laboratory for testing, and the second being the laboratory’s taking of the individual amounts necessary for individual tests that may be applied. It is the former that is food sampling: the latter is analytical laboratory sub-sampling, often relying upon initial homogenization of the entire submitted sample