Milk is generally very rich in nutrients and this may lead it to be an ideal growth environment for many microorganisms, including pathogens, so effective measurements aiming to ensure total microbiological safety of milk and minimize the risk to human health are needed. Milk heat treatments are the most common practices carried out to inhibit the microbial growth; therefore it is necessary to have analytical procedures that are more and more up-to-date and capable of detecting the effectiveness of the heat treatments. Most of the reference and official methods to assess heat treatment in milk are based on the evaluation of the modifications of some milk components following the thermal process, such as the determination of enzyme activities (alkaline phosphatase and lactoperoxidase), whey proteins, Maillard reaction compounds (generally furosine), and lactulose. Besides the most common techniques (liquid and gas chromatography, capillary electrophoresis, or spectroscopy) used for the detection of single thermal indicators, new approaches, such as chemometric studies or more recent techniques, including size-exclusion chromatography with online electrospray mass spectrometry or stable isotope ratio mass spectrometry, are discussed in this review in order to evaluate heat treatment in milk.

Different technologically treated Italian milks (whole and semi-skimmed ultra-high temperature (UHT), pasteurized and microfiltered milk), collected from 2009 to 2012, were evaluated for nutritional and technological properties. No significant differences in calcium and sodium were detected (p > 0.05), while significant differences were observed concerning phosphorus content, between whole and semi-skimmed milk, and lactose content, between pasteurized and UHT milk (p < 0.05). In UHT milk, lactose isomerization occurred, and lactulose (from 8.6 to 104.0 mg/100 g) was detected. No significant differences (p > 0.05) were detected for choline, a functional molecule, between whole (11.3–14.6 mg/100 g) and semi-skimmed milk (11.1–14.7 mg/100 g), but there were significant differences (p < 0.05) in processing milk (UHT vs. pasteurized milk and UHT vs. microfiltered milk). Among the unsaponifiable compounds, only 13 cis retinol and trans retinol showed differences in technologically treated milk (pasteurized vs. UHT milk and microfiltered vs. UHT milk; p < 0.05). In this research, the greater was the “severity” of milk treatment, the higher was the percent ratio 13 cis/trans retinol (DRI, degree of retinol isomerization). The degree of antioxidant protection parameter (DAP), useful to estimate the potential oxidative stability of fat in foods, was significantly different between whole and semi-skimmed milk (p < 0.05). Finally, the evaluation of color measurement of whole milk showed a good correlation between beta carotene and b* (r = 0.854) and between lactulose and a* (r = 0.862).

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Summary This research was aimed at testing whether the partial substitution of NaCl with KCl (50 or 75% relative substitution) in the fermenting brine of green table Nocellara del Belice olives debittered using two used method (Spanish and Castelvetrano) affected the presence of nutritionally relevant molecules (tocopherols, carotenoids, squalene, phenolic compounds) or the organoleptic characteristics of the table‐ready product. Results support the effectiveness of NaCl partial substitution by potassium chloride for olive processing, with the advantage of a significant decrease in the amount of sodium in the end product. The presence of the main bioactive molecules remained substantially unchanged, but KCl was associated with an increase in bitterness in both debittering methods. However, bitter properties (bitter, persistence and aftertaste) of olives obtained through the modification of Castelvetrano method still remained below those debittered with the classic Spanish method preserving, for such olives, the characteristic of ‘sweet olives’.

Saffron is a widespread consumed spice with potential health promoting compounds. In dairy technologies it is often used to enhance color and flavor of cheeses, so it would be recommended to know the content of saffron functional compounds in cheese made with this spice, as they could still have potential bioactivity. For this purpose, an UHPLC (ultra high performance liquid chromatography) method was developed, with the aim of reducing analysis time and solvent consumption. A methanol:water solution (80:20 v/v) was used to extract saffron compounds from cheese with stirring for 1 h in the dark at room temperature, then the samples were centrifuged at 3500 rpm, for 5 min at 4 °C and the residues were extracted twice. A linear gradient elution of acetonitrile in water allowed to simultaneously determine picrocrocin and crocins in saffron in a short time (16 min), and allowed a quantitative determination of crocins in commercial cheeses. Keywords: cheese, saffron, crocins, UHPLC IntroductionSaffron is the red dried stigmas of Crocus sativus L. flowers, now successfully cultivated in European countries (Greece, Spain, Italy, France and Switzerland) and in Morocco, Egypt, Israel, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, India, New Zealand, Australia and China.Recently, a review by Akowuah and Htar 1 reported many therapeutic properties of saffron chemical constituents, such as anticancer, cardioprotective, antidepressant, anxiolytic and anticonvulsant activities, improving learning and memory skills and management of metabolic syndrome diseases. The bioactive compounds mainly responsible of the therapeutic properties of saffron are crocins, crocetin, picrocrocin and safranal. Crocins, responsible for color and coloring properties, are a group of high water soluble cis and trans carotenoids that are sugar esters of crocetin (8,8'-diapocarotenedioic acid), with different sugar moieties, such as glucose, gentiobiose and neapolitanose. Trans-crocetin di(β-D-gentiobiosyl) ester is the most abundant crocin in saffron 2 with a high solubility being attributed to the sugar moieties. The bitter taste of saffron is derived primarily from picrocrocin (4-(β-D-glucopyranosyloxy)-2,6,6-trimethyl-1-cyclohexene-1-carboxaldehyde), a monoterpene glycoside produced from zeaxanthin degradation. Crocins represent from 0.5 to 32.4% of saffron's dry matter, 3 while picrocrocin ranges from 0.8 to 26.6% on a dry matter. [3][4][5] Food items containing saffron are generally expected to provide an added value for consumers, thanks to its potential health promoting compounds. For this reason, saffron has been widely studied and many analytical methods for its compounds determination are available: in particular, the standard method, 6 which specifies the test methods for dried saffron (filaments and powder) obtained from the Crocus sativus L. flower, is based on the use of UV-Vis spectrophotometry to determine the quality of saffron in international commercial agreements, but many other analytical methods were developed, such as: thin layer chromatography, 4 hig...