ABSTRACT
Food adulteration can take many forms, including the addition of sugars, acids, volatile oils, addition of juices of other fruits, use of concentrate in a "fresh" product and use of low-quality product recovered from what are waste products of manufacture. The practice of adulteration commonly arises for two main reasons: firstly it can be profitable, and secondly adulterants can be easily mixed and are subsequently difficult to detect. This chapter provides examples on the application of vibrational spectroscopy techniques to authenticate foods that have high commercial value such as flesh foods, honey, and wine. The potential of combining of different spectroscopic methods or techniques with chemometric methods opens new possibilities to authenticate different food matrices. The development of these methods and techniques provides the food industry with a vast arsenal of tools that can be used to authenticate and trace foods, as well as to assure consumers about the origin and safety of foods.
