UV–Vis Spectroscopy for Food Analysis

Detection of food quality, authenticity, and adulteration is a great concern among consumers in the current market. Given the inherent complexity of food products, most instrumental techniques employed for quality and authenticity evaluation are time-consuming, expensive, and labor-intensive. Therefore, there has been an increasing interest in simple, fast, and reliable analytical techniques for assessing food quality attributes. One of these techniques is the absorption spectroscopy in the Ultraviolet and Visible (UV–Vis) region, which is used for qualitative and quantitative characterization of sample compounds. Due to simplicity and reliability, this technique has already been used in several research areas of food science and food processing industries. This chapter briefly discusses the effectiveness and relevance of using UV–Vis technique in food analysis. This chapter presents specific applications of UV–Vis technique to analyze different food matrices (e.g., meat, milk, coffee, wine, vegetables, fruits, drinks, and olive oil) with respect to food composition, authentication, adulteration, and quality.