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Producing the food and drinks you consume every day isn’t as simple as you might think. Manufacturers constantly test their products to ensure they meet high standards of quality. With each improvement, companies must evolve with changing technologies, sciences, and rules. The reasons carbohydrate analysis is important are for more than safety. In fact, this analysis is mainly to ensure your food looks and tastes good.
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How Carbohydrates Are Analyzed
Scientists use high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to detect and analyze carbohydrates in food. HPLC is a special laboratory science used to separate mixtures for detection and analysis. Columns used for carbohydrate analysis are amino-bonded reverse phase columns. They allow simple solvents to pass through during the mobile and stationary phases.
Food Quality
Testing carbohydrates ensures good-quality food. People want their food to taste and look a certain way. By analyzing the components of a food, manufacturers can manipulate its exact taste, appearance, and quality.
Nutritional Labeling
You wouldn’t know what was in your food without the nutrition label, and manufacturers wouldn’t know what to put on it if they didn’t analyze the food they produced. Government agencies require labels on packaged foods. This means the manufacturer must know the carbohydrate concentration in its products.
Manufacturing Process
Manufacturers also need to know the composition of the food and beverages they make so that they can acquire the right equipment. Working with certain concentrations of carbohydrates can alter the efficiency of some manufacturing equipment, requiring more maintenance.
Most people don’t realize how much science goes into the food they eat. The main reason carbohydrate analysis is important is that it makes food look and taste how you want. Manufacturers use this analysis to satisfy their customers as well as government agencies. Nowadays, HPLC is the best and quickest way to ensure food quality. You can thank chromatography the next time you look at the nutrition label on a packaged food.
