Analysis of Other Food Products: Spices and Culinary Herbs

In recent years, the condiment global trend has increased due to the consumer’s interest in ethnic gastronomy. In consequence, there is a continuous demand for analytical methods to monitor spice and herb authenticity since these matrices have become vulnerable to fraud practices as a result of their increasing economic value and the complexity of the supply chains of this industry. This chapter details the applications of non-invasive proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H NMR) for spice and herb integrity analysis including different authentication issues, such as adulterant detection, quality control, geographical origin traceability, and discrimination according to post-harvest processing, among other applications related to the product’s genuineness. In this chapter, the main extraction methods applied for 1H NMR analysis are described, providing a comprehensive guide to selecting the solvent depending on the desired metabolite coverage, an effective extraction protocol, and internal standards recommended in each case, among other relevant parameters. Besides, the most applied 1H NMR analytical approaches (including both untargeted and targeted strategies) are discussed according to three main application criteria, i.e. (1) adulterant detection and quality control, (2) geographical/processing discrimination, and (3) other authentication practices, paying attention to their advantages and drawbacks for their implementation in routine analysis.