Digestion and Analysis of Large Baby Food Samples

Introduction

Foodborne disease represents a significant, costly and largely preventable public health burden. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 6 Americans get sick from food each year, with 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths. For the food industry, the costs of recalls, lost sales and legal fees run into billions of dollars. In a move to reduce the occurrence and impact of foodborne disease, the FDA has recently introduced the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. The Act raises requirements for effective prevention and monitoring and gives the agency greater enforcement powers. The need for effective and reliable food testing is thus only going to increase.

Manufacturers of infant and baby food face perhaps even greater scrutiny than other niches, given the potential risks to growth and development in this population. The level of concern and media coverage that followed research showing high levels of heavy metals in some baby foods is testament to the need for vigilance and the best possible testing regimes.

This application note describes acid digestion of baby food samples using batch processing on a MARS 6. We attempted to use larger sample sizes than a typical digest as well as minimize the acid concentration. All samples were run in a single batch in order to maximize efficiency. The use of the iwave contactless insitu temperature measurement system provided the accurate temperature control of every vessel making this possible.