Artifacts and contaminants in the analysis of food flavor.

The qualitative and quantitative complexity of food flavor makes its complete analysis rather difficult, involving a series of necessary successive steps, from the transport of the samples to the laboratory to the final quantification of the volatiles in the extract. However, because of the minute amounts of most odorous substances in food, these numerous manipulations of the sample are often the cause of alterations of the flavor, and complementary techniques are generally recommended to get a clear idea of its original composition. Arguments and clues, from 95 publications dealing with the analysis of various types of food, demonstrating that some of the volatile substances finally identified could have been in fact contaminants or artifacts arising from the analysis itself are presented. For practical reasons, the logical sequence of treatments successively applied to the sample throughout the flavor analysis is adopted.