Importance of food quality analysis in relation to food safety and human health and COVID-19 in particular

ABSTRACT

Food quality analysts, scientists, and technologists have significantly focused on compositional analysis of food products to provide authenticated nutritional facts around the world. Nowadays, individuals have become greatly concerned about their eating habits and want healthy food in their homes with proper composition and nutrition labels. Overall, consumers, the food industry, and government have become more concerned about food quality and safety. Therefore, to analyze individual ingredients, composition analysis of specific products has become significant for critical product characterization. This chapter presents information regarding the rules and regulation of food quality analysis and importance of compositional analysis and techniques utilized for food products. It discusses different types of samples analyzed and the protocol for selecting food quality analysis methods. Food compositional analysis has become essential because it is the right of consumers to know about health facts about their purchasable products. Therefore, analysis of compositional parameters of food like moisture, fat, protein, carbohydrate, vitamin, and mineral analysis protocols are discussed herein with suitable techniques. Moreover, the analysis of chemical properties, for example, pH, enzyme, and contaminant analysis, is also done to monitor the quality of food products. If the quality analysis method goes wrong, then consumption of food ingredients above tolerance level by consumers may cause several health issues. This chapter also focuses on analytical techniques used to detect SARS-CoV-2 on the food surface and packaging material. According to the research, this virus is more active in cold places, as they enhance the virus survival time as compared to room temperature. © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.