Physical Methods for the Identification of Irradiated Food

The development of methods for the identification of irradiated foods helps enforce national and international regulations on labelling to ensure the consumer's free choice to buy irradiated or unirradiated foods. and the availabilityof such methods may assist the promotion of international trade in irradiated food products and help prevent abuse of the technology. A number of approaches to determine the physical , chemical, microbiological and biological changes that occur in foods treated with ionizing radiation have been studied. However no single method is universally applicable. Among physical measurements, the leading methods of indentification are electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy and thermoluminescence(TL). ESR is an established non-destructive method for the analysis of free radicals from their traps and TL is the emission of light from irradiated mineral extracts by heating. Viscosity of carbohydrate polymers by causing chain breaks by irradiation, measuring the impedance of potatoes and detection of gases produced radiolytically are promising techniques for identification purposes. Irradiated water-containing foods show significant supercooling when monitored with a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC), which can be applied to identifying irradiated ones.