ABSTRACT
Vitamins are essential substances that are necessary for normal health and growth. Even though vitamins are required in small amounts to maintain good health, lack of them in babies’ diet can cause serious diseases. Infant formulae (IF), such as cow milk, soy milk, and derived products, are the principal source of vitamins for babies; thus, vitamins content of these types of products should be sufficient to achieve an adequate intake. The fortification of IF generally performed with premixes, which contain high concentration of vitamins, is to ensure the required amount of vitamins in products and also to anticipate or correct for losses that may occur during food processing. Hence, accurate measurement of vitamins is needed for the quality control of IF during production and storage to guarantee the amount of vitamins at the end of the product shelf life. Several forms of vitamins are found in IF. Sample preparation is a crucial step to address during the method development prior to the quantification of vitamins in IF. For many years, HPLC methods coupled to different detection techniques such as UV, fluorescence, or electrochemical have been mostly applied to the quantification of vitamins in IF. Currently proposed analytical approaches for the detection of vitamins are mainly based on HPLC-MS or HPLC-MS/MS. There is also great interest in the development of screening methods based on microbiological assays, immunoassays and biosensors, which have the main advantages of being of low cost, having short analysis times, and the possibility of their onsite use. The clear trend in this field is the miniaturization of screening as well as their automation.
