Investigation of Potential Food Intake Biomarkers by LC-MS/MS: Suitability Under Conditions Close to Everyday Live

Food intake biomarkers are proposed to be a more reliable tool for investigating the nutritional status compared to food diaries or food frequency questionnaires. Nevertheless, biomarkers have some disadvantages such as the influence of the individual lifestyle, different metabolism, nutrient-nutrient interaction or the specificity of the used biomarkers. To evaluate the suitability of several biomarkers, a study under conditions close to everyday life was conducted.

Ten healthy volunteers were divided into three groups who followed different meal plans for 24 h and collected their entire urine. Afterward, several potential biomarkers were quantified using an LC-MS/MS approach. To further investigate the suitability of those biomarkers, the results were investigated with the main goal of grouping the participants according to their provided diet, while the first author did not have any knowledge of the meal plans or other specific knowledge about the study design.

The use of different biomarkers enables the evaluation of different eating habits without any prior wash out period or bigger than usual portion sizes. Especially long-term biomarkers seem to have a good suitability. Very high intakes and very low intakes are easier to distinguish than a moderate intake. Food intake biomarkers are proposed as a more reliable tool than food diaries or food frequency questionnaires. Nevertheless, data under realistic conditions are rarely available. In this study, ten volunteers were divided into three groups with different meal plans. An LC-MS/MS approach was performed and the data were further investigated with the main goal of grouping the participants according their provided diet, while the first author did not have any knowledge about the meal plans.