Food Chemistry and Analytics

We analyse food constituents, with a special focus on making comparisons before and after various processing steps. We provide essential support and infrastructure for laboratory operations for teaching and research, and support projects with modern physicochemical analyses.

Expertise and services

We are involved in researching options for the valorisation of side streams, and work on detecting and quantifying food constituents.

Physicochemical methods:
 

  • Chemical macronutrient characterisation of foods and derivatives (fats, proteins, minerals, water content, fibres). 
  • Liquid chromatography analyses of vitamins (e.g. B12), sugars and oligosaccharides, organic acids, alcohol, bioactive substances (e.g. polyphenols, glucosinolates), etc.
  • Spectrophotometric analyses of macro- and micro-nutrients as well as other nutrients and anti-nutrients (macro and microlevel approaches).
  • Physical characterisation of solid and liquid foods via rheology and texture analysis. 
  • Determination of water activity, water-holding capacity and oil-holding capacity.
  • Particle size distribution and zeta potential.
  • Microscopic investigations.
  • Protein analysis: Kjeldahl, Dumas, BCA, Bradford, SDS-PAGE.
  • Selective wet-chemical analysis (e.g. iodine value, peroxide value, etc).
  • NIR and FTIR spectroscopy.
  • Dynamic foam analysis. 
  • Amylographic, extensiographic and farinographic flour/dough analyses. 
  • Differential scanning calorimetry.

Team and contact information

Are you interested in working with us or do you have any questions about our research activities in the field of food chemistry and analytics? Please get in touch.