Susanne Kuehne, Decernis
Food Fraud Quick Bites

Fraud Is the Spice Of Life

By Susanne Kuehne
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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis

High adulteration rate is found in black pepper and cumin powder.

Food Fraud, cumin
Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne.

The high value of spices makes them one of the most popular targets for intentional adulteration. Researchers in Brazil developed an efficient method for fraud detection: Near-infrared spectrometer (NIR) associated with chemometrics. This method is able to detect adulterants like corn flour and cassava in spice samples, revealing a high rate of adulteration, between 62% for commercial black pepper and 79% for cumin samples.

Resource

  1. Amanda Beatriz Sales de Lima et al. (January 2020). “Fast quantitative detection of black pepper and cumin adulterations by near-infrared spectroscopy and multivariate modeling”. Food Control. Vol. 107.

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Susanne Kuehne, Decernis

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