In Westernized cultures, dietary supplements have been gaining popularity in recent years. In China, traditional herbal supplements have been used for millennia. In both cases, the threat of adulteration and need for further characterization of ingredients have been driving forces behind the need for increased screening. This note presents a new approach to the rapid screening of a product marketed as an herbal weight loss aid and the fingerprint characterization of omega fatty acid dietary supplements derived from marine and flaxseed oils.

Developing a fast and accurate screening method for detecting a wide range of toxic compounds is an important task for food safety. HR/AM spectrometry overcomes the screening limitation via selected reaction monitoring (SRM) on triple stage quadrupoles, because specific compounds need not be selected before analysis. Highly confident ID is achieved by accurate mass measurement of both precursor and fragment ions. A novel UHPLC-MS/MS method employing the Q Exactive benchtop Orbitrap mass spectrometer is proposed here for the study of possible spiked toxic agents into apple juice.

Sudan dyes are red dyes used for coloring solvents, oils, waxes, petrol, or as additives in shoe and floor polish. They have been found in a number of food products such as chili / chili-containing products. Sudan dyes are banned as food additives in the USA, the EU, and many other countries, due to their links to cancer and other negative health effects. To overcome limitations in popular offline SPE and LC-UV measurements, we describe an easy, comprehensive LC method using a Transcend TLX-1 system powered by TurboFlow technology to analyze five illegal dye residues in a variety of sauces.

Marine biotoxins are produced by naturally occurring microalgae, whose populations can increase significantly under certain environmental conditions to form a harmful algal bloom (HAB). Marine biotoxins pose a significant food safety risk when bioaccumulated in shellfish that are ingested by humans. We describe the use of the Thermo Scientific Exactive benchtop LC/MS system powered by Orbitrap technology for screening lipophilic marine biotoxins commonly found in shellfish. The method was optimized using a standard mixture of marine biotoxins, and then applied to a mussel tissue extract.

Screening of pesticides, mycotoxins and veterinary drugs is of great importance in regulated environments (e.g. food and animal feed analysis). The use of triple quadrupole MS is popular, but has certain limitations: no post acquisition re-interrogation of data, limited number of compounds per analysis, and no ability to screen for unidentified unknowns. In this work, we show a full scan screening approach using a novel single stage Orbitrap mass spectrometer coupled to U-HPLC, providing high mass accuracy at high resolutions, elemental composition, and resolving co-eluting targets.