Assessment of cheese frauds, and relevant detection methods: A systematic review

Amirhossein Abedini; Mahla Salimi; Yeganeh Mazaheri; Parisa Sadighara; Mahmood Alizadeh Sani; Elham Assadpour; Seid Mahdi Jafari

doi:10.1016/j.fochx.2023.100825

Assessment of cheese frauds, and relevant detection methods: A systematic review

Food Chem X. 2023 Aug 6:19:100825. doi: 10.1016/j.fochx.2023.100825. eCollection 2023 Oct 30.

Authors

Amirhossein Abedini^{1

2}, Mahla Salimi³, Yeganeh Mazaheri², Parisa Sadighara², Mahmood Alizadeh Sani², Elham Assadpour^{4

5}, Seid Mahdi Jafari⁶

Affiliations

¹ Students Scientific Research Center (SSRC), Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
² Division of Food Safety and Hygiene, Department of Environmental Health, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
³ Student Research Committee, Department of Food Science and Technology, National Nutrition and Food Technology Research Institute, Faculty of Nutrition Science and Food Technology, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
⁴ Food Industry Research Co., Gorgan, Iran.
⁵ Food and Bio-Nanotech International Research Center (Fabiano), Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Gorgan, Iran.
⁶ Department of Food Materials and Process Design Engineering, Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Gorgan, Iran.

Abstract

Dairy products are widely consumed in the world due to their nutritional and functional characteristics. This group of food products are consumed by all age groups due to their health-giving properties. One of these products is cheese which has a high price compared to other dairy products. Because of this, it can be prone to fraud all over the world. Fraud in food products threatens the world's food safety and can cause serious damage to human health. There are many concerns among food authorities in the world about the fraud of food products. FDA, WHO, and the European Commission provide different legislations and definitions for fraud. The purpose of this review is to identify the most susceptible cheese type for fraud and effective methods for evaluating fraud in all types of cheeses. For this, we examined the Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, and ScienceDirect databases. Mozzarella cheese had the largest share among all cheeses in terms of adulteration due to its many uses. Also, the methods used to evaluate different types of cheese frauds were PCR, Spectrometry, stable isotope, image analysis, electrophoretic, ELISA, sensors, sensory analysis, near-infrared and NMR. The methods that were most used in detecting fraud were PCR and spectrometry methods. Also, the least used method was sensory evaluation.

Keywords: Adulterants; Cheese; Dairy products; Food safety; Frauds.

Publication types

Review