Food Safety and Regulatory Measures

Biography

Biography: Magdalena Kupska

Abstract

The word “superfruit” has been recently introduced to the nomenclature. It comprises 13 natural products among which can be found fruits, vegetables, corns and tea. These food ingredients introduced into human diet bring many health benefits and can easily enhance well-being. The term superfruits is considered as a new marketing approach to promote the demand for rare fruits which can be consumed as foodstuffs or used as ingredients by manufacturers of functional foods, neutricals, beverages. However, gaining the popularity of health-oriented superfruits on market depends heavily on both research results and appropriate marketing. Fruits which contain powerful bioactive compounds such as polyphenols, anthocyanins, terpenes or procyanidins, with high antioxidant capacity may be classified as a superfruits.
One of the most interesting compounds are terpenes. Terpenes are the group of fruity origin compounds, with more than 40 000 known molecules among which are more than 400 known monoterpenes. Many terpenes have bioactive properties and often determine the flavour and taste of fruits. Moreover terpenes and terpenoids are the main components of essential oils.
Due to the large number of volatile compounds and the complexity of investigated fruits, a novel tool to measure and compare fruits aroma, comprehensive multi-dimensional gas chromatography (GC×GC) was used. The time of flight mass spectrometry (TOFMS) has been used in the identification of components (such as terpenes) in complex fruit samples.