Adulteration of Food Supplements and Analytical Methodologies for their Quality Control

Medicinal plant extracts are complex mixtures containing many compounds. Their therapeutic properties may be due to the cumulative or synergistic effects of contained compounds. The adulteration or substitution of the herbal products especially food supplements is crucial problem in herbal products industry. Adulteration or substitution may be deliberate or accidental. Valuable herbal products are substituted with similar low quality products and used as adulterant which may or may not have any therapeutic potential as that of original product. The quality control studies are very important to provide active, high quality and safe food supplement. Therefore, fast, specific, accurate, inexpensive, and high throughput analytical methods are needed. Some chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques are used for identification and quantification of bioactive compounds, impurities, contaminants, and also other compounds present in the food supplements. The chromatographic fingerprint analysis offers significant advantages in analytical methods because of the complex and multi component matrix of the food supplements. Screening of the content and quantification of food supplements can be possible in a single fingerprint run.

Keywords: Adulteration, Food supplements, Quality control.