Chapter 17: Application of Metabolomics to Food Systems

Compared with earlier methods of food characterization, metabolomics has brought an unprecedented boost in uncovering the wide biochemical composition of various food products. This change has only been possible through the advent of, and continuous innovations in, modern metabolomics platforms, especially mass spectrometry (MS). In MS, the most widely used technique is liquid chromatography coupled to MSⁿ [i.e. LC–MSⁿ (where n=variants of MS platforms required for separation of the sample)] followed by gas chromatography coupled to MSⁿ (GC–MSⁿ) and others like Fourier transform-ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS). The most critical steps in food metabolomics are sample preparation, extraction of metabolites, running, and data analysis. Apart from the biochemical characterization of food products, the emphasis has also been given to food safety and authenticity, characterizing food products during fermentation and processing, identifying health-related dietary biomarkers, and heath-friendly bioactive components through intervention studies of population cohorts. Food metabolomics in the future will play an important role in defining diets in a more precise way and helping to link the effects of diet and human nutrition. Thus, in the future, it will gather more interest from nutrition biologists to classify human diets broadly.