Provenance of food proteins

Abstract

The modern consumer has become a discerning food customer where provenance of the food is becoming an important determinant of purchasing intent. Provenance can be defined as a term that describes the origins/history of food such as where it has been grown, raised, or caught. With global warning, additional descriptors such as carbon-, and water- footprint, green house gas emissions, naturally grown/reared, have also become important factors. A typical example of provenance is the commonly used label of ‘organic’. Provenance is frequently associated with the flavour of food – think wine. Food proteins that can be marked with a provenance label, typically have higher economic value; any food product with a competitive marketing edge that provides for a higher value is exposed to fraud. The food industry is challenged to find quick, reliable, non-invasive technologies to prove provenance. A procedure that is showing potential in this arena is the use of light-based (spectroscopic) technology such as hand-held NIRS (Near Infra-Red Spectrometers) to provide spectra that is then analysed by machine learning algorithms to detect what differentiates specific food protein samples.