Determination of α-oxo-aldehydes and furfurals using HPLC-PDA-ELSD method in sugar-containing food products

•Sensitive determination of glyoxal and furfurals in 24 sugar containing preparations.•The dual detector online chromatographic analysis (HPLC-UV-ELSD) was exercised.•The decision tree and multilayer perceptron neural network models were developed.•Occurrenceof 5-HMF shown correlation with physical state and age of the sample.•Sugar concentration plays a role in formation of furfural in marketed food samples.