Dietary Supplement Oil Classification and Detection of Adulteration Using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy

Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) methods and common chemometric techniques [including discriminant analysis (DA), Mahalanobis distances, and Cooman plots] were used to classify various types of dietary supplement oils (DSO) and less expensive, common food oils. Rapid FT-IR methods were then developed to detect adulteration of DSO with select common food oils. Spectra of 14 types of DSO and 5 types of common food oils were collected with an FT-IR equipped with a ZnSe attenuated total reflectance cell and a mercury cadmium telluride A detector. Classification of DSO and some common food oils was achieved successfully using FT-IR and chemometrics. Select DSO were adulterated (2-20% v/v) with the common food oils that had the closest Mahalanobis distance to them in a Cooman plot based on the DA analysis, and data were also analyzed using a partial least-squares (PLS) method. The detection limit for the adulteration of DSO was 2% v/v. Standard curves to determine the adulterant concentration in DSO were also obtained using PLS with correlation coefficients of >0.9. The approach of using FT-IR in combination with chemometric analyses was successful in classifying oils and detecting adulteration of DSO.