Analytical Chemical Approaches for Detecting and Quantifying Adulterants in Common Food Items

Abstract: Food adulteration, intentional or accidental substitution, addition, or misrepresentation of food components poses serious threats to public health, consumer trust, and economic integrity. With the globalization of food supply chains, the sophistication of adulteration practices has increased, necessitating robust, sensitive, and rapid analytical methods for detection and quantification. This review presents a comprehensive overview of contemporary analytical chemical approaches employed to identify and quantify common adulterants in widely consumed food items such as milk, honey, spices, edible oils, and meat products. Emphasis is placed on techniques developed or significantly advanced over the past five to ten years, including chromatographic, spectroscopic, mass spectrometric, and biosensor-based methods. The review highlights the principles, advantages, limitations, and real-world applicability of these techniques, while also addressing emerging trends such as portable sensors, data-driven analytics, and multi-omics integration. The goal is to provide research scholars and scientists with a concise yet critical assessment of the current state-of-the-art in food authenticity testing and to outline future directions for ensuring food safety and integrity.

Keywords: Food adulteration; Analytical chemistry; Food authenticity; Spectroscopy; Chromatography; Mass spectrometry; Biosensors; Food fraud detection