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Description
The use of food additives has been practiced a long time ago, in order to perform a specific function. So, for example, food preservatives are added to extend the shelf life of food products, artificial sweeteners are added to replace sugars, while stimulants are added to increase consumer alertness.
This study presents a developed and validated reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) method with ultraviolet-diode array detection (UV-DAD) for simultaneous determination of the commonly used food preservatives (sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate), artificial sweeteners (acesulfame-K, sodium saccharin and aspartame) and caffeine in various beverages. Separation and quantitative determination of the analytes were carried out on the reversed-phase octyldecylsilane column as stationary phase, and methanol and diluted phosphoric acid as mobile phase, applying isocratic elution with the flow rate of 1 mL/min. The chromatographic process was followed at 210, 230 and 260 nm, and under constant column temperature at 25 ºC. The developed method was validated testing linearity, precision, accuracy, the limits of detection (LOD) and quantification (LOQ). All the validation parameters were within the acceptance range. The method was successfully applied for determination of target analytes in various beverages, that were taken randomly from local markets.
