Food Allergens : Analysis Instrumentation and Methods

Covering all of the major recognized food allergens in the US and EU, this comprehensive work begins with an introduction to the problem and prevalence of food allergens. It discusses health issues and the presence of allergens in various food products, examines methodologies for analysis and detection, and details specific methods for each food type. Maintaining a consistent structure and format throughout, each chapter describes the properties of the allergen, and demonstrates the appropriate sample extraction and clean-up, separation and analysis, and detection and quantification techniques.

While there are many books about various aspects of food allergy and allergens, not many comprehensively review the wide range of instrumentation and methods used in this analysis. Covering all of the major recognized food allergens in the US and EU, Food Allergens: Analysis Instrumentation and Methods begins with an introduction to the problem and prevalence of food allergens. It discusses health issues and the presence of allergens in various food products, examines methodologies for analysis and detection, and details specific methods for each food type.

Maintaining a consistent structure and format, each chapter describes the properties of the allergen, and demonstrates the appropriate sample extraction and clean-up, separation and analysis, and detection and quantification techniques. With discussions of health implications and the presence of plant food and animal-derived allergens in different foodstuffs, the book covers allergens in:

• Peanut, soybean, and lupin
• Tree nuts, sesame seeds, mustard, and celery
• Milk and eggs
• Cereals
• Fish, crustaceans, and mollusks

A compilation of information about the instrumentation and methods of analyzing allergens, the book provides insight into the extent of problems caused by food allergens. Concise and compact, it provides guidance on how to choose quantitative analyses in order to detect threshold values properly.