Search

Headspace sorptive extraction and GC/MS, coupled with chemometric tools, were used to predict the amounts of pine nuts and Pecorino in Pesto Genovese, a typical Italian basil-based pasta sauce. Two groups of samples were prepared at different times and with ingredients from different batches for building the predicting models and testing their performances. Principal component analysis and partial least-squares regression (PLS) were applied to the chromatographic data. The 24 most-predictive variables were selected, and the application of PLS to the training set samples led to two models that explained approximately 70 of the variance in cross-validation, with prediction errors of 0.1 g for Pecorino and 0.6 g for pine nuts, thus confirming the reliability of the analytical method and the predicting ability of the models. The results obtained for the test set samples were not completely satisfactory, with a prediction error and a bias of 5.0 and 4.1 g, respectively, for Pecorino and corresponding values of 4.1 and 2.0 g for pine nuts. This preliminary study shows that the analytical methods used can allow construction of models with high predictive ability only if the great variability of the headspace composition of the ingredients and the effect of Twister are considered.

Cholesterol oxidation in commercial meat-based homogenized and freeze-dried baby foods was examined. The 7 major products of this reaction were determined by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS). As far as single cholesterol oxidation products (COP) are concerned, 7-ketocholesterol was the major product of direct cholesterol oxidation in the 2 groups of analyzed samples, and this study confirmed that it is a useful marker of the whole cholesterol oxidation process. Nevertheless, the amounts of cholesterol-5β,6β-epoxide were often similar to and sometimes higher than the amounts of 7-ketocholesterol, thus showing a strong development of both direct and indirect cholesterol oxidation pathways. Total COP content was significantly higher in freeze-dried than in homogenized products. Moreover, in freeze-dried samples, the COP content per serving was quite variable and, in 2 samples, it was close to or even higher than 500 μg. The greater development of cholesterol oxidation in the freeze-dried samples was confirmed by their highest total COP/cholesterol percent ratios. A constant correlation between the fatty acid composition and the development of cholesterol oxidation was not found, although a positive correlation between unsaturated fatty acid content and total COP content occasionally exists in samples of the same brand.