Considerations on the Analysis of E-900 Food Additive: An NMR Perspective

Abstract

Food additives are in widespread use in the food industry to extend the shelf life of food, improve its organoleptic characteristics or facilitate industrial processing. Their use is not without controversy, which makes regulation and control crucial for food safety and public health. Among food additives, silicone-based antifoaming agents (polysiloxanes or E900) are difficult to analyze and quantify due to their polymeric nature. Currently, there is no official method of quantifying this additive in foods. In this context, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a quantitative method for speciation analysis of silicon compounds almost without known interferents. In this work, we describe the evolution of the regulation of the E900 additive, discuss different analytic methods quantifying polydimethylsiloxanes (PDMS), and propose a new method based on NMR suitable for analyzing the content of E900 in the form of PDMS in various types of food from dietary oils to marmalades and jellies, among others. The proposed method consists of a previous quantitative concentration of PDMS by liquid–liquid extraction and the monitoring of the quantification using a bis(trimethylsilyl)benzene (BTMSB) standard to control the variability, ranging within 2–7%, depending on the food. This simple, direct, and reproducible procedure for aqueous and lipidic foods may help to monitor and fill a gap in regulatory legislation regarding the E900 additive.

A Fusion of Molecular Imprinting Technology and Siloxane Chemistry: A Way to Advanced Hybrid Nanomaterials

“…It should be pointed out that siloxanes have found countless and diverse applications, not only in biomedicine and pharmaceutical fields [ 69 ] but also in personal care products and cosmetics due to the non-toxicity and biocompatibility of siloxane compounds [ 70 ], as well as other areas, such as electronic manufacturing, automotive industry, textile products, construction materials, medical equipment, and food processing ( Figure 1 ) [ 69 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 ]. It has to be underlined that such broad application capabilities of siloxanes are possible because of their extraordinary properties such as flexibility and rubber-like elasticity, fracture toughness, mechanical and chemical durability, thermal stability, compressive strength, optical transparency, and amphiphilicity, among others [ 80 ].…”