An especially perfidious type of edible oil fraud is the dissolution of inedible plastic material, such as polypropylene or polyethylene packaging material, in hot cooking oil during the frying process. This is supposed to prolong the shelf life and the crispness of deep-fried snack food, not surprisingly with serious health implications. Attenuated total reflectance fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) in combination with principal component analysis (PCA) provides a straightforward method to analyze samples directly with minimal preparation, to detect polymers in palm cooking oil, as done in this study.

Resource

1. Ismail, D. et al. (2021). “Classification Model for Detection and Discrimination of inedible Plastic adulterated Palm Cooking Oil using ATR-FTIR Spectroscopy combined with Principal Component Analysis”. Vol 25 No 3. Malaysian Journal of Analytical Sciences (MJAS).