Abstrato

Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry method for determination and confirmation of BHA, BHT and TBHQ in vegetarian ready to eat meals

Shiva Kant Dwivedi, David Antony, Swarup Banerzee, Ajay Kumar Trivedi

Synthetic phenolic antioxidants (SPAs) are permitted in a limited number of food products according to international legislations, with individualmaximumlimits in each case. This study describes an in-house validated GCMS method for quantitative determination and confirmation for the TBHQ, BHA and BHT in vegetarian ready to eat meals. Develop and optimised simple and rapid sample preparation method for extraction of the three SPAs from the ready to eat food items.Analytical characteristics of the GCMSmethod such as limit of detection, linear range, and recovery were evaluated. By using external standard method the analytical results showed that the linear correlation coefficients of TBHQ, BHAand BHT were more than 0.998 and Recoveries (n = 6) of the SPAs when spiked to ready to eat food at 5,10 and 30mg kg-1 were in the ranges 97.3-105.2%for BHA, 102.7-104.7%for BHTand 98.4-101.5%forTBHQ.The lowest detectionlimitwas 0.1mg kg-1 for TBHQ&BHAand 0.05mg kg-1for BHT. The levels of SPAs in all food items analysed were below the legal limits.