Foodomics: Principles and Applications

Research in food science and nutrition has grown parallel to the consumers’ concern about what is in their food and the safety of the food they eat. To give an adequate answer to the rising consumer demands, food and nutrition researchers around the world are facing increasingly complex challenges that require the use of the best available science and technology. A good portion of this complexity is due to the socalled Globalization and the movement of food and related raw materials worldwide, which are generating contamination episodes that are also becoming global. An additional difficulty is that many products contain multiple and processed ingredients, which are often shipped from different parts of the world, and share common storage spaces and production lines. As a result, ensuring the safety, quality, and traceability of food has never been more complicated and necessary than today. The first goal of food science has traditionally been, and still is, to ensure food safety. To meet this goal, food laboratories are being pushed to exchange their classical procedures for modern analytical techniques that allow them to give an adequate answer to this global demand. Besides, the new European regulations in the European Union countries (e.g., Regulation EC 258/97 or EN 29000 and subsequent issues), the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act in the USA, and the Montreal Protocol have had a major impact on food laboratories. Consequently, more powerful, cleaner, and cheaper analytical procedures are now required by food chemists, regulatory agencies, and quality control laboratories. These demands have increased the need