Determination of furan and alkylfuran in breakfast cereals from the European market and their correlation with acrylamide levels

Abstract

Furan and alkylfurans are a group of contaminants formed through thermal processing. For breakfast cereals, this includes processing steps like extrusion cooking, roasting, puffing or baking. Furan was classified as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B) and, therefore, monitoring of this contaminant including other furans is of great interest. Breakfast cereals have been part of previous studies, but only few publications provided data regarding furan or alkylfuran levels in different groups of breakfast cereals. In this study, the furan and alkylfuran levels of over 70 samples have been analyzed and interpreted for 4 groups of breakfast cereals, namely flakes and cornflakes, extruded cereals, puffed grains and granolas. In this study, a solid phase microextraction method was established to extract the analytes from the headspace of the samples followed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry analysis. In addition to furan, the alkylfurans 2-methylfuran, 3-methylfuran, 2,5-dimethylfuran, 2-ethylfuran and 2-pentylfuran were quantitated and levels up to 230 µg/kg furan and almost 200 µg/kg 2-pentylfuran were detected. The samples were also analyzed for acrylamide and in most cases no correlation with furan/alkylfurans was observed. Furthermore, during storage of the samples, the furan and methylfuran levels were stable but a rise of the levels of 2-ethylfuran and 2-pentylfuran was observed which is potentially linked to lipid oxidation. Graphical Abstract