Food Industry

Elemental analysis in the food industry

The need for chemical analysis of food has increased in recent years. Growing emphasis in the industry on the nutritional value of foods, and increased regulations to list nutritional contents on packages require analysis of dietary content. This requires not only accurate analysis of organic components such as vitamins, but also inorganic nutrients such as minerals, and especially salt content.

In food processing the addition of supplements to increase the appearance and or performance of food products must also be monitored. This latter need requires ongoing analysis to support the food processing operation.

A monitoring program that measures the concentration of these nutrients and additives during production can offer a cost savings to manufacturing. With near line XRF equipment which gives quantitative concentration of each component within a short time, information can be fed back to the process to insure that sufficient ingredients are added to meet product specification without over adding. Tighter control on the addition of expensive additives can reduce production costs.