Analyzing packed food using NMR and some examples: Adulterated Olive Oil in Full Bottles and fat content in mayonnaise

An important challenge of the food industry is to analyze food after packed ensuring the quality and shelf life without open the package. As nuclear magnetic resonance uses radiofrequency, glass, paper, or plastic package does not interfere in the analysis of the content. In that way, NMR can be used as a fast procedure and non-invasive method to analyze any kind of packed food since the package has no metal.

On this review we selected some published articles describing the use of time-domain nuclear magnetic resonance (TD-NMR) to confirm the authenticity and labeling in packed products. Colnago et al suggested TD-NMR to detect olive oil adulteration with polyunsaturated vegetable oils in closed bottles, important work as olive oil is one of the most adulterated foods in the world. Colnago et al also propose the method to measure fat content in mayonnaise, which we also present more applications of this method  suggesting it can be applied in different products proving TD-NMR is a good and fast method to analyze packed food.