Rapid Determination of Key Components in Nutritional Drinks

Introduction

Over the past 20 years, public interest in nutraceuticals has rapidly grown. Many are turning to nutritional drinks as meal replacements and dietary supplements. A variety of factors influence purchasing and consumption of these beverages. One such area of focus includes the added nutritional value these drinks offer to a person’s diet in the form of protein, amino acids, and/or fat content. Furthermore, it is crucial for the manufacturer to analyze and control these major components in order to optimize production, control costs, and produce high quality products.

Traditional methods often rely on tedious and time-consuming gravimetric wet chemistry techniques. Alternatively, CEM offers a suite of instrumentation to address these needs in a more efficient, reliable, and environmentally friendly manner. As an example, reference methods for crude fat analyses include Soxhlet, Babcock, and Mojonnier extraction. These techniques rely on the addition of solvent to dissolve and separate the desired fat from other components in the sample matrix and are often accompanied by acid/base hydrolysis. The ORACLE^TM represents an attractive alternative to these methods, measuring fat without calibration or method development for any sample type. The ORACLE can be paired with the SMART 6^TM for direct, accurate solids and fat determination in minutes.

Total protein determination also relies on harsh Kjeldahl sulfuric acid digestion, followed by titration or combustion methods to determine total nitrogen content. The Sprint^® uses dye-binding technology, wherein CEM’s iTag^® dye molecule selectively binds to basic amino acid side chains in protein. Not only does this offer a targeted approach, but also allows testing to be completed in under five minutes, with reagents that do not require chemical waste disposal.