NutriFOODchem Unit (member of Food2Know), Department of Food Safety and Food Quality, Ghent University , Coupure Links 653, B-9000 Gent, Belgium.
J Agric Food Chem. 2013 Jun 19;61(24):5624-33. doi: 10.1021/jf303337z. Epub 2013 Jan 28.
Food allergy represents an important food safety issue because of the potential lethal effects; the only effective treatment is the complete removal of the allergen involved from the diet. However, due to the growing complexity of food formulations and food processing, foods may be unintentionally contaminated via allergen-containing ingredients or cross-contamination. This affects not only consumers' well-being but also food producers and competent authorities involved in inspecting and auditing food companies. To address these issues, the food industry and control agencies rely on available analytical methods to quantify the amount of a particular allergic commodity in a food and thus to decide upon its safety. However, no "gold standard methods" exist for the quantitative detection of food allergens. Nowadays mostly receptor-based methods and in particular commercial kits are used in routine analysis. However, upon evaluation of their performances, commercial assays proved often to be unreliable in processed foods, attributed to the chemical changes in proteins that affect the molecular recognition with the receptor used. Unfortunately, the analytical outcome of other methods, among which are chromatographic combined with mass spectrometric techniques as well as DNA-based methods, seem to be affected in a comparable way by food processing. Several strategies can be employed to improve the quantitative analysis of allergens in foods. Nevertheless, issues related to extractability and matrix effects remain a permanent challenge. In view of the presented results, it is clear that the food industry needs to continue to make extra efforts to provide accurate labeling and to reduce the contamination with allergens to an acceptable level through the use of allergen risk management on a company level, which needs to be supported inevitably by a tailor-validated extraction and detection method.
食物过敏是一个重要的食品安全问题，因为它可能产生致命影响；唯一有效的治疗方法是从饮食中完全去除过敏原。然而，由于食品配方和加工的日益复杂，食物可能会因含有过敏原的成分或交叉污染而意外受到污染。这不仅影响消费者的健康，也影响到参与检查和审计食品公司的食品生产者和主管当局。为了解决这些问题，食品行业和控制机构依赖现有的分析方法来定量检测食品中的特定过敏原含量，从而决定其安全性。然而，对于定量检测食物过敏原，目前还没有“黄金标准方法”。如今，在常规分析中主要使用基于受体的方法，特别是商业试剂盒。然而，在评估其性能时，商业检测往往在加工食品中不可靠，这归因于蛋白质的化学变化会影响与所用受体的分子识别。不幸的是，其他方法（包括与质谱技术相结合的色谱方法以及基于 DNA 的方法）的分析结果似乎也受到类似的食品加工影响。可以采用几种策略来改进食物中过敏原的定量分析。然而，提取物的可提取性和基质效应仍然是一个持久的挑战。鉴于所呈现的结果，很明显，食品行业需要继续努力，通过在公司层面上使用过敏原风险管理，提供准确的标签，并将过敏原污染降低到可接受的水平，这不可避免地需要经过验证的定制提取和检测方法的支持。
