New technologies for food quality assessment: sustainable determination of bioactive compounds

Food Quality and Food Safety are essential to ensure healthiness and genuity of food products. Bioactive Compounds, as Phenolic Compounds (PC) and Biogenic Amines (BAs), are molecular markers that describe the initial quality of food and the reaction mechanisms that occur during the technological treatments, fermentation processes or shelf-life of the product, throughout the food chain. All the techniques employed for the evaluation of food quality use a great amount of solvent, reagents, raw materials, energy and time. Therefore, in relation to the high economic and environmental impact of the existent methods, the development of new sustainable methods is necessary. In this work the application of new technologies for the sustainable determination of important molecular marker as PC (to determinate Food Quality) and BAs (for Food Safety) in different food matrices is proposed. In particular, the application of Gold Nanoparticles (AuNPs) in Extra virgin Olive Oil lead to extract PC, with an extraction efficiency up to 80%, and to release the 85 % in 1 mL of water. AuNPs were also used to extract PC from Olive Mill Wastewater, two types of NPs were tested and the AuNPs-Cys result to have the higher extraction efficiency up to 70%. BAs were determined in Anchovies by a Non-specific Liquid Sensor. Sensor allows to reduce time of analysis (6 min vs 45 of the HPLC method) and to shoot down the derivatization step. To evaluate the impact of the new methods and to compare them with the traditional ones the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was proposed. This methodology permits to quantify the energy and materials used (input) and the wastes released in the environment (output), in order to evaluate the sustainability and it is regulated by ISO 14044:2006. Then, the Eco-Care Matrix (ECM) was also applied to visualize the real sustainability of the new methods herein developed. In conclusion both developed methods, result to be completely sustainable, reducing the environmental, social and economic impact.