ABSTRACT
Laboratory analysis of food quality often involves extensive preparation procedures, during which foods are severely disturbed by size-reducing, de forming, or diluting steps. This is very unlike the way in which food consu mers evaluate the quality of food products (i.e., foods are consumed while their integrity is generally intact.). One may therefore ask: Are the current chemical and physical methods for food quality measurement reliable? Natur ally it would be desirable to be able to analyze food quality in a completely nondestructive and noninvasive way. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques are among those most capable of performing such a task. NMR techniques, including NMR spectroscopy and NMR imaging, or more fre quently termed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), can be used to nondestructively and noninvasively study the chemical and physical properties and phenomena, anatomical structure, and dynamic processes of food materials and products.
