Liquid Chromatography in the Food Industry: Impacts and Applications

In 2025, the global market value of the food industry amounts to almost USD $9.7 trillion. The US alone makes up over USD $850 billion of the global revenue, one of the largest in the world. With market growth steadily increasing more than 6% annually (CAGR 2025-2029), the pressure on agriculture, transportation, and manufacturing businesses to produce and provide billions with safe food is only expected to rise. Even small changes in population, climate, infrastructure, or the economy can surmount major challenges for supply chains, making food shortages and surplus a never-ending balancing act with complex consequences. Despite nearly 35 million Americans facing food insecurity, 120 billion pounds in the US are wasted every year. Almost 40% of food products never reach the market because they are lost in transportation due to poor handling, packaging, or shipping delays. As demands increase, agriculture companies become more prone to cut corners to meet them, often leading to unsettling production practices and the use of non-tested chemicals and GMOs. Even so, the amount of global food wasted could feed over 2 billion people every single year.

So, what can be done? Although the issue is complicated, good manufacturing practices (GMPs) are measures taken by the World Health Organization to set better guidelines on a global scale. This includes every aspect of the food industry from farm to table, including monitoring the production of raw materials, processing equipment, manufacturing facilities, personnel training, sanitation standards, transportation practices, packaging needs, labeling restrictions, and product testing. In the US, these regulations are protected by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). As a result, food safety has come a long way, with most Americans able to trust that the labels match the products they choose to buy.

None of this would be possible without advanced lab testing, which has given the food and beverage industry the ability to know exactly what is in food (or shouldn’t be). High-performance liquid chromatography, often coupled with mass spectrometry, is an industry-standard analytical technique for determining the chemical composition of food products. Exploring advancements in analytical techniques can provide insight into overcoming challenges and predicting future trends in food science.

Chromatography’s Applications in the Food & Beverage Industry

Because our food supply is more diverse than ever, food safety has only become more important and complex. Compliance with regulatory requirements is mandatory for food manufacturers in most countries, like the US, which has made lab testing an integral part of food production. Regulatory bodies like the FDA set limits on certain compounds found in food, such as mycotoxins and residual solvents. Documentation of these analyses is often required as proof of conformity, which strengthens your position in regulatory audits and helps build consumer trust by ensuring accurate nutritional labels.

By employing chromatographic analytical techniques, many companies can verify that each product batch complies with regulatory standards before reaching the market to ensure product quality and public safety. Moreover, consumers can trust product labeling, reducing risks associated with mislabeling, contamination, or the presence of undisclosed ingredients that could trigger allergies or adverse reactions.

Liquid chromatography’s ability to precisely separate and quantify complex food components has helped analysts achieve new quality standards in some of the following areas: 

• Contamination Detection: LC (including LC-MS) allows laboratories to identify and quantify various contaminants, including pesticides, heavy metals, and additives in food products. This method offers precision, enabling the identification of even trace levels of harmful substances and potential health hazards.

• Nutrition Label Verification: Accurate food profiling from LC can make nutrition facts precise, consistent, and reliable. This allows food production companies, government regulators, and consumers to be in accord.

• Determination of Bioactive Compounds: Bioactive compounds, such as antioxidants and polyphenols, can have significant health benefits. Identifying these compounds within food products is essential for assessing nutritional value.

Food and beverage liquid chromatography has become so important because of its unique ability to separate complex compounds. There are thousands of types of foods and thousands of possible compounds that could be included in each one. This makes food and beverage matrices for analysis overwhelmingly complicated, but the use of liquid chromatography has changed that. From a single sample, LC can identify and quantify its precise chemical makeup on the molecular level.

High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is a type of LC that operates at significantly higher pressure compared to conventional LC. Instead of relying on gravity as a force to pass a mobile phase through a column, HPLC uses a series of pumps to greatly increase the pressure to improve the speed and efficiency of a test. Higher pressure can also lead to greater peak separation, allowing more compound identification. With the use of a smaller stationary phase, highly pure solvents, and more intricate equipment, lab testing results with HPLC are much more refined and accurate for the analysis of food samples.

Dairy, Meat, and Plant-Based Products

In the food analysis, liquid chromatography is vital for analyzing constituents in dairy and meat products. You can ensure product safety by detecting contaminants like antibiotics or hormones. Also, it's used to authenticate claims regarding the origin of animal-derived products.

Chromatography helps evaluate nutrients and detect pesticides in plant-based products, which is essential for maintaining quality standards. This methodology can distinguish between genuine products and fraudulent ones, thus protecting consumers and reputable producers. Thus, liquid chromatography is indispensable for varied food sources.

Beverage Industry Focus

In the beverage industry, liquid chromatography plays a vital role in evaluating the safety and quality of products. It facilitates the detection of undesirable substances, such as mycotoxins, and verifies the authenticity of ingredients in beverages, including juices, wines, and spirits.

This technique plays a fundamental role in optimizing beverage formulations for desired flavor profiles and nutritional benefits. Consequently, companies can uphold regulatory compliance while fostering consumer trust and satisfaction, which are crucial for the continually evolving beverage sector. Moreover, advanced methodologies such as LC-MS provide more precise analyses in reduced timeframes, thereby contributing to efficient quality control processes.

Food Matrices & Sample Preparation

Food and beverage matrices present unique challenges due to their complexity and variability. Many matrices include diverse components, such as fats, proteins, carbohydrates, and various other trace elements. Because of different and distinct properties, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to sample preparation.

For example, if you are testing a solid or a type of oil, liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) may be one of the best techniques to use due to its ability to separate a sample using two immiscible solvents. Typically, a polar solvent, such as HPLC-grade water, and a non-polar solvent, such as HPLC-grade dichloromethane, are mixed with the analyte, which separates sample analyte compounds into the two liquid phases. With the help of a separatory funnel and other equipment, compounds can be recovered from the solvents through evaporation, crystallization, and other additional purification techniques. Another technique used is solid-liquid extraction, also known as “leaching,” which uses the preferential dissolution of a solid mixture to separate its components. This works particularly for solid samples that contain soluble and insoluble compounds. A simple example would be coffee: water extracts soluble compounds, including caffeine, creating a liquid mixture while leaving the spent coffee grounds.

For a liquid sample, solid phase extraction (SPE) is a popular method of choice. This entails separating and purifying a liquid mixture by passing the sample through a solid absorbent material, such as a functionalized column. Although a challenging process, SPE offers precise analytical results. In cases where a simpler and faster sample preparation approach is preferred, methodologies like QuEChERS ('Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged, and Safe') provide an alternative framework. Instead of using SPE with a functionalized column, the QuEChERS framework might suggest using centrifugation of the sample with extraction salts and an immiscible solvent like acetonitrile. While SPE can be more selective for individual target analytes, the QuEChERS framework can improve throughput when high analyte specificity is not required. These separation techniques are popular for analyzing pesticides, mycotoxins, antibiotics, and other food contaminants from their source environment.

Analytical Methods, Chromatography Columns and Solvents

The choice of analytical method really depends on your sample and lab testing goals. In the realm of chromatography, these decisions directly impact your choice of chromatography columns and solvents. For precise separation, LC columns must be the appropriate material and size to interact effectively with a target analyte. For more specifics about column types and their applications, visit here to explore their varieties further. 

These reasons make the solvent selection process as essential as any other component needed for liquid chromatography. Due to their interactivity with a column and sample, mobile phase solvent properties have direct implications for your results. Furthermore, purity is of the utmost importance, for unaccounted impurities in normal-grade solvents can interfere with separation efficiency and analytical accuracy. This is why HPLC-grade solvents, such as ours at Birch Biotech, are always recommended for high-performance chromatography.

Mobile Phase Innovations

Innovations in the mobile phase of HPLC have led to significant improvements in separation efficiency and speed. Ultra-high purity solvents and solvent blends are now available, which reduce interference and enhance the clarity of results. It is also beneficial to understand new chemical modifiers that can optimize separation by altering interactions of analytes with the mobile or stationary phase. The introduction of ionic liquids in the mobile phase can offer advantages such as lower volatility and improved solvation properties. These are particularly useful to help separate compounds that may be difficult to distinguish using traditional methods.

Detection of Specific Compounds

Among the various applications of HPLC, identifying crucial compounds in food and beverages is typically categorized into three main classes: additives, natural components, and residues.

Additives are defined as substances added to processed food on an industrial scale to assist with improving preservation and shelf life, but they can also modify sensory properties, like improving taste or masking aftertaste.

Food additives, whether natural or artificial, are substances added to food to enhance flavor, texture, shelf life, or appearance. While some additives, like vitamin C (ascorbic acid) or citric acid, occur naturally in foods, they are also extracted or synthesized for use in processed products. In contrast, minimally processed or unprocessed foods do not have additives intentionally introduced during manufacturing. Food additives play a crucial role in large-scale food production by preventing spoilage, improving consistency, and maintaining quality. While many additives are considered safe at regulated levels, excessive consumption or prolonged exposure to certain substances—such as artificial preservatives, colorants, or flavor enhancers—has raised health concerns. To ensure consumer safety, government agencies like the FDA strictly regulate and evaluate food additives before approving them for use.

Natural components of food are what we think of as the main ingredients. Most are considered nutrients, which serve actual bodily purposes when consumed and are vital for survival. Nutrients are divided into two main categories: macronutrients and micronutrients. Macronutrients can directly provide energy, which is measured in calories. Almost all macronutrients are either fat, protein, or carbohydrate. Micronutrients, on the other hand, do not primarily serve as energy sources, but they are still essential for bodily functions such as metabolism, immunity, and development. Common examples are vitamins and minerals.

Although most natural components are nutrients, there are still some considered non-nutrients. These include bioactive compounds like polyphenols, amines, and natural toxins, which do not provide essential nutrition but may influence health. Some non-nutrients result from the breakdown of antioxidants or other bioactive substances, while others form as byproducts of preservatives, such as nitrites in deli and smoked meats. Their effects on health vary, with some offering benefits and others posing risks at high concentrations. Liquid chromatography can help ensure that non-nutrients are balanced or at safe consumable levels.

Residues and contaminants are the third class of compounds food analysts monitor. Unlike additives and natural components, these ingredients serve no beneficial purpose and are unwanted substances not intentionally added to food. For example, antibiotic drugs may be used to suppress disease in livestock that are found in meats later. Antiparasitic drugs may be used in fertilizers or pesticides, yet they are absorbed by plants and identified in produce. Poor food storage or transportation may cause fungi to thrive under certain conditions, which can lead to the presence of mycotoxins and acute poisoning.

Almost all residues and contaminants are unwanted byproducts either from a natural or artificial source. They can also have serious adverse health effects. Even at trace levels, they can be impactful on entire consumer groups, which is why food analysts scrutinize this category of compounds closely with liquid chromatography:

Amino and Fatty Acids Analysis

Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, vital for nutrition and metabolism. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) allows you to detect these in complex food matrices. It provides precision and accuracy, ensuring the correct identification of each amino acid. Free fatty acids, crucial for energy and cell structure, can also be effectively analyzed using HPLC. This technique can separate individual free fatty acids from mixtures, making it possible to quantify them accurately.

Employing HPLC allows you to identify essential free fatty acids like omega-3 and omega-6, which are significant for heart health and inflammation regulation. This method's efficiency ensures that even volatile and unsaturated fatty acids are not degraded during analysis, guaranteeing accurate results that inform nutritional labeling and food quality.

Identifying Phenolic and Organic Acids

Phenolic compounds are powerful antioxidants, protecting against oxidative stress and contributing to health benefits like reduced inflammation. Using chromatography, you can accurately detect these compounds even in trace amounts, enhancing the analysis of fruits, vegetables, and beverages. Organic acids, like citric and malic acids, are crucial for flavor and preservation.

Chromatography helps you identify and quantify these acids, improving product quality and safety. For instance, determining the levels of phenolic compounds and organic acids in citrus fruit allows you to enhance juice flavor while maintaining nutritional content. The detailed analysis ensures compliance with safety standards, optimizing the balance between taste and preservation.

Vitamin C and Other Important Components

Vitamin C, a vital antioxidant, plays a crucial role in immune function and collagen synthesis. Chromatographic techniques effectively measure Vitamin C levels in food products, ensuring their nutritional value meets regulatory standards. This method provides precision, distinguishing Vitamin C from other ascorbic acid derivatives and components.

Beyond Vitamin C, chromatography is essential for detecting other critical nutrients, like Vitamin E and folic acid. These components are vital for health, and understanding their levels in food helps manage dietary requirements. By analyzing these elements, you can ensure products offer the nutritional benefits they claim to provide, effectively supporting consumer health.

Sources for this Article:

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• https://www.birchbiotech.com/blogs/resources/industry-applications-for-lc-ms-advancing-analytical-solutions-across-sectors

• https://www.birchbiotech.com/blogs/resources/solvent-selection-for-mass-spectrometry-key-considerations-and-best-practices

• https://www.birchbiotech.com/collections/hplc-grade

• https://www.birchbiotech.com/blogs/resources/solvent-recycling-in-hplc-systems-enhancing-efficiency-and-sustainability

• https://www.birchbiotech.com/blogs/resources/ensuring-product-safety-with-residual-solvent-testing

• https://www.agilent.com/en/product/small-molecule-columns

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• https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/food-additives

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