A Simple and Effective Mass Spectrometric Approach to Identify the Adulteration of the Mediterranean Diet Component Extra-Virgin Olive Oil with Corn Oil

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Francesco Di Girolamo²  Andrea Masotti¹  Isabella Lante⁵  Margherita Scapaticci⁵  Cosima Damiana Calvano⁶  Carlo Zambonin⁶  Maurizio Muraca³  Lorenza Putignani⁴ 

[1] Gene Expression-Microarrays Laboratory, Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital, Scientific Institute for Research, Hospitalization and Health Care (IRCCS), Piazza Sant’Onofrio 4, Rome 00165, Italy; E-Mail:;Department of Laboratory Medicine, Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital, Scientific Institute for Research, Hospitalization and Health Care (IRCCS), Piazza Sant’Onofrio 4, Rome 00165, Italy;Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, University of Padova, Via Giustiniani 3, Padova 35122, Italy; E-Mail:;Parasitology Unit, Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital, Scientific Institute for Research, Hospitalization and Health Care (IRCCS), Piazza Sant’Onofrio 4, Rome 00165, Italy;Department of Laboratory Medicine, San Camillo Hospital, Viale Vittorio Veneto 18, Treviso 31100, Italy; E-Mails:;Dipartimento di Chimica, Università degli Studi di Bari “Aldo Moro”, Via Orabona 4, Bari 70126, Italy; E-Mails:

关键词: mediterranean diet;    extra-virgin olive oil;    corn oil;    MALDI-TOF MS;    phospholipids’ profiles;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijms160920896

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) with its nutraceutical characteristics substantially contributes as a major nutrient to the health benefit of the Mediterranean diet. Unfortunately, the adulteration of EVOO with less expensive oils (e.g., peanut and corn oils), has become one of the biggest source of agricultural fraud in the European Union, with important health implications for consumers, mainly due to the introduction of seed oil-derived allergens causing, especially in children, severe food allergy phenomena. In this regard, revealing adulterations of EVOO is of fundamental importance for health care and prevention reasons, especially in children. To this aim, effective analytical methods to assess EVOO purity are necessary. Here, we propose a simple, rapid, robust and very sensitive method for non-specialized mass spectrometric laboratory, based on the matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) coupled to unsupervised hierarchical clustering (UHC), principal component (PCA) and Pearson’s correlation analyses, to reveal corn oil (CO) adulterations in EVOO at very low levels (down to 0.5%).

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.