Portable Mid-Infrared Device and Chemometrics for the Prediction of Low (0.5%) Total Trans Fat Content in Fast Foods

The ruling that partially hydrogenated oils (PHO) are no longer "generally recognized as safe (GRAS)," has accelerated the replacement of PHO ingredients with fat alternatives having increasingly lower or no trans fat content. In the present study, we developed a Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopic procedure in conjunction with multivariate partial least squares regression (PLSR) and found it suitable for the accurate prediction of low (0.5%) total trans fat content, as percentage of total fat, measured as fatty acid methyl esters (FAME), in the lipids extracted from 24 representative fast foods. This multivariate data analysis approach is relevant because the precision of the current univariate FTIR official method (AOCS Cd 14-09) is reportedly poor below 2% of total fat, while PLSR has allowed us to accurately predict the concentration of low trans fat in fast foods. The performance of a portable FTIR device was also evaluated and compared to that of a benchtop FTIR spectrometer. For both infrared data sets, PLSR-predicted concentrations of total trans FAME, ranging from approximately 0.47% to 11.40% of total FAME, were in good agreement with those determined by a primary reference gas chromatography (GC) method (R²>0.99); high prediction accuracy was also evidenced by low root mean square error of cross-validation (RMSECV) values. The lowest RMSECV error of 0.12% was obtained with the portable device. The lowest total trans FAME concentration, determined by GC to be 0.42%, was accurately predicted by the portable FTIR/PLSR procedure as 0.47% of total FAME.