• Unwanted Substances in Food Supplements — Chromatography Explores

LC-MS

Unwanted Substances in Food Supplements — Chromatography Explores

Mar 28 2017

As people become more aware of their health — they are taking more control of their bodies and weight. This leads to increased exercise and activity (hopefully), better food and diet choices and a burgeoning supplement market.

In recent years, the supplement market has seen increasing sales, with the UK market alone estimated to be worth over £600 million. With the supplement market expected to grow by over 7% annually over the next few years, that’s a lot of pills, powder and drinks that will be manufactured, sold and consumed. But can you be sure what you’re getting?

RASFF has the answer

A paper published recently in the Journal of the Association of Public AnalystsA Review of Methods for the Simultaneous Detection of Illegal Ingredients in Food Supplements — suggests that we can’t. The team report that food supplements are: ‘quite often adulterated with a complex range of compounds and substances.’

The UK based team carried out their research by examining two major food safety databases — the European Commission run RASFF (Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed) and the United States’ FDA run Enforcement Reports. These two databases are concerned with food safety and collect all data food safety data — including undeclared and unauthorised substances.

Viagra and appetite suppression

The unwanted substances found in the food supplements include:

permitted food additives in excess of their limits, contaminants, unauthorised novel food ingredients, unauthorised nutritionally related compounds, excess vitamins, controlled drugs and one instance of the poison strychnine.

Whilst this quote illustrates the tremendous range of unwanted substances in our food supplements, it is in the details that perhaps the most surprising information is found. When the team looked at the RASFF database from 2009 to 2016 — the most frequent undeclared pharmacologically active ingredients in food supplements included sildenafil and sibutramine (including analogues and derivatives). Sildenafil is the medication sold as Viagra to treat erectile dysfunction and sibutramine is used primarily as an appetite suppressant to help treat obesity. So how can we find these substances?

Chromatography seeks the answers

The team suggest that the first choice for screening food supplements for the main pharmacological compounds that they have identified is liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry (LC-MS) — with NMR an ‘excellent first-line method of control for herbal food supplements’ if it is available. The benefits of using liquid chromatography in conjunction with mass spectrometry are discussed in the article, Capillary Flow LC-MS Unites Sensitivity and Throughput.

So be careful what you buy and where you buy it from. That unlicensed supplement could produce some very unwanted — or perhaps wanted — side effects.


Digital Edition

Chromatography Today - Buyers' Guide 2022

October 2023

In This Edition Modern & Practical Applications - Accelerating ADC Development with Mass Spectrometry - Implementing High-Resolution Ion Mobility into Peptide Mapping Workflows Chromatogr...

View all digital editions

Events

analytica 2024

Apr 09 2024 Munich, Germany

Korea Lab 2024

Apr 23 2024 Kintex, South Korea

Korea Chem 2024

Apr 23 2024 Seoul, South Korea

AOCS Annual Meeting & Expo

Apr 28 2024 Montreal, Quebec, Canada

SETAC Europe

May 05 2024 Seville, Spain

View all events