Edible Oils
Adulteration is becoming more and more common in edible oils. This is due to rising costs and supply chain pressures leading to opportunistic producers attempting to take short cuts. Such price increases mean that the value of oil increases as a commodity.
Authenticity services can validate the true nature of an oil. We have testing protocols for olive, avocado, flax seed and coconut oils.
Adulteration in oil can occur in many ways:
Diluting Higher Priced Oils
Diluting or substituting expensive extra virgin olive oil with lower grade oils or adding vegetable or seed oils while labeling products as pure olive oil.
Adding Coloring Agents
To mimic the color of pure olive oil, coloring agents can be added.
Fraudulent Labelling
Lower grade, blended or less expensive varieties of oil can be fraudulently labelled as premium or pure varieties.
How can Oils be Authenticated?
Producers and brand owners of oils have an interest in ensuring that their oils are the quality and type claimed on the label (e.g., "extra virgin"). Enhanced authenticity testing using NMR can help provide assurance and validation that what’s on the label matches what’s in the bottle. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy can provide many details about the product profile, including information about the molecular composition of an oil:
Adulterants and Contaminants
As NMR can provide non targeted analytical data, it can reveal what else is in the oil besides the product being validated.
Relative % of Fatty Acids
NMR can quantify the relative percent of saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fatty acids, and can detect other markers that indicate the presence of non-olive oils.
Varying Grades of Oil
NMR can identify different grades of oil within an oil group e.g., extra virgin olive oil vs. pure olive oil.
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