Department of Chemistry, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, United States.
J Agric Food Chem. 2021 Mar 24;69(11):3527-3536. doi: 10.1021/acs.jafc.0c07830. Epub 2021 Mar 10.
Food authenticity and safety are major public concerns due to the increasing number of food fraud cases. Meat fraud is an economically motivated practice of covertly replacing one type of meat with a cheaper alternative raising health, safety, and ethical concerns for consumers. In this study, we implement the MasSpec Pen technology for rapid and direct meat analysis and authentication. The MasSpec Pen is an easy-to-use handheld device connected to a mass spectrometer that employs a solvent droplet for gentle chemical analysis of samples. Here, MasSpec Pen analysis was performed directly on several meat and fish types including grain-fed beef, grass-fed beef, venison, cod, halibut, Atlantic salmon, sockeye salmon, and steelhead trout, with a total analysis time of 15 s per sample. Statistical models developed with the Lasso method using a training set of samples yielded per-sample accuracies of 95% for the beef model, 100% for the beef versus venison model, and 84% for the multiclass fish model. Predictors of meat type selected included several molecules previously reported in the skeletal muscles of animals, including carnosine, anserine, succinic acid, xanthine, and taurine. When testing the models on independent test sets of samples, per-sample accuracies of 100% were achieved for all models, demonstrating the robustness of our method for unadulterated meat authentication. MasSpec Pen feasibility testing for classifying venison and grass-fed beef samples adulterated with grain-fed beef achieved per-sample prediction accuracies of 100% for both classifiers using test sets of samples. Altogether, the results obtained in this study provide compelling evidence that the MasSpec Pen technology is a powerful alternative analytical method for meat analysis and investigation of meat fraud.
由于食品欺诈案件的数量不断增加，食品真实性和安全性是公众关注的主要问题。肉类欺诈是一种经济动机的行为，即秘密地用更便宜的替代品替代一种肉类，这给消费者的健康、安全和道德带来了关注。在这项研究中，我们实施了 MasSpec Pen 技术，用于快速直接的肉类分析和鉴定。MasSpec Pen 是一种易于使用的手持式设备，与质谱仪相连，采用溶剂液滴对样品进行温和的化学分析。在这里，MasSpec Pen 分析直接对几种肉类和鱼类进行分析，包括谷物喂养的牛肉、草饲牛肉、鹿肉、鳕鱼、大比目鱼、大西洋三文鱼、红三文鱼和虹鳟鱼，每个样品的总分析时间为 15 秒。使用训练样本集的 Lasso 方法开发的统计模型对牛肉模型的准确率为 95%，牛肉与鹿肉模型的准确率为 100%，多类别鱼类模型的准确率为 84%。选择的肉类类型预测因子包括几种先前在动物骨骼肌中报道过的分子，包括肌肽、鹅肌肽、琥珀酸、黄嘌呤和牛磺酸。在对独立测试样本集进行模型测试时，所有模型的准确率均达到 100%，证明了我们的方法在未经篡改的肉类鉴定中的稳健性。MasSpec Pen 对掺有谷物喂养牛肉的鹿肉和草饲牛肉样本进行分类的可行性测试，使用样本测试集，两种分类器的准确率均达到 100%。总之，本研究的结果提供了令人信服的证据，证明 MasSpec Pen 技术是一种强大的肉类分析替代方法，可用于调查肉类欺诈。
