Choline is a water-soluble micronutrient vital to cell membrane integrity, methyl group metabolism, and nervous system activity. We present a method to determine choline in foods using acid hydrolysis prior to ion chromatography to separate total choline from other cations in the sample.  This method uses electrolytic eluent generation with a cation-exchange column that has an optimized selectivity for small hydrophilic amines to provide an efficient and sensitivite determination of choline in < 20 min. Infant formula, egg powder, and soy flour samples were treated with acid hydrolysis adapted from AOAC method 999.14 followed by syringe filtration, demonstrating a detection limit of 2.3 �g/L and recoveries in the range of 93.6-98.3%. The feasibility was further demonstrated on several infant formulas and adult nutritionals with a wide variety of matrices using microwave assisted acid hydrolysis with significant time-saving advantage and recoveries ranging from 97.8-104%.

Determination of choline in infant formula and other food samples by ion chromatography

245th National Meeting (2013)

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