In the past, many studies have been undertaken to mitigate the formation of the so-called “food-borne toxicants” during food processing. But, sometimes, an established pathway is not known or well understood, leading to approaches on the basis of "trial and error". Thus, beside the development of accurate, reliable, sensitive and selective quantitation methods mostly using stable isotopically labeled standards, the elucidation of formation pathways and parameters influencing the generation of these toxicants is very important. This knowledge at hand enables systematic minimization strategies. The lecture will demonstrate that the use of labeled compounds is a useful tool to get deeper insights into the formation of food-borne toxicants. Thereby, the labeled compounds are not used as internal standards for quantitation but as precursors or intermediates to follow their reactions in model systems or real food by mass spectrometry experiments, e.g., GC-MS or LC-MS/MS. In detail, the proof of formation mechanisms of acrylamide, acrolein, and furan will be presented. Further, the development of quick and simple quantitation methods on the basis of headspace GC-MS analysis will be presented. Their robustness and reliability was proven in comparison to more time-consuming derivatization methods, exemplarily shown for the (E)-2-alkenals acrolein and crotonaldehyde by stable isotope dilution analysis (SIDA) using [13C3]-acrolein and synthesized [13C4]-crotonaldehyde.

Stable isotope labeling experiments - a useful tool to identify formation pathways of food-borne toxicants

250th National Meeting (2015)

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