Elsevier

Food Chemistry

Volume 370, 15 February 2022, 131007
Food Chemistry

Analytical strategies to determine the labelling accuracy and economically-motivated adulteration of “natural” dietary supplements in the marketplace: Turmeric case study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2021.131007Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • A case study was performed to test turmeric dietary supplements’ “natural claim”.

  • Synthetic curcumin was attributed to synthetic ingredients found in samples.

  • Cheaper turmeric products are more likely to contain less curcuminoids.

  • Orthogonal turmeric quality control approach is preferred by using Carbon-14 and HPLC.

Abstract

Turmeric has faced authenticity issues as instances of economic-adulterations to reduce the cost. We used carbon-14 and HPLC analyses as complementary methods to verify “all-natural” label claims of commercial dietary supplements containing turmeric ingredients. A high percentage of curcumin-to-curcuminoids value was used as an indicator to imply the presence of synthetic curcumin. However, using the HPLC method alone did not provide direct evidence of curcuminoids’ natural origin, whereas using only the carbon-14 method cannot test for potency label claims and determine which constituent(s) contain 14C radiocarbon. By analyzing results from both methods, a significant correlation between the percentage of curcumin-to-curcuminoids and % biobased carbon (Pearson’s r = −0.875, p < 0.001) indicated that synthetic curcumin was greatly attributed to determined synthetic ingredients. Only four out of the 14 samples analyzed supported authentic label claims. This orthogonal testing strategy showed its potential for the quality control of turmeric products.

Keyword

Curcumin
Turmeric
Adulteration
Synthetic
HPLC
Carbon-14 testing
Biobased carbon

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These authors contributed equally to the work and should be regarded as co-first authors.