title: Spectrophotometric determination of nitrate in baby foods: collaborative study.
abstract: A collaborative study was conducted of a spectrophotometric method for determination of nitrate after cadmium reduction to nitrite in baby foods containing meat. Thirty-one municipal and 2 industrial food laboratories participated in the study. The study design involved 2 baby food matrices. Samples of both matrices were prepared at 3 concentration levels between 52 and 309 mg NaNO3/kg as blind duplicates. A blank without added nitrate was also included. The outlier percentage of the results was very low (4.3%). It was typical for the method that recoveries were slightly > 100%. Recoveries for baby foods varied between 113.3 and 116.9%, and were acceptable for control purposes. The relative standard deviations for repeatability were 5.0-18.1%. The relative standard deviations for reproducibility were 8.3-21.6%. Three collaborators also evaluated liquid chromatographic technique for nitrate determinations. These preliminary results are presented but are not analyzed statistically. The spectrophotometric method was adopted first action by AOAC INTERNATIONAL.
authors.affiliation: VTT Biotechnology and Food Research, Espoo, Finland.
authors.forename: A M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Sjöberg
authors.forename: T A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Alanko
mesh_terms: D005504:Food Analysis; D006801:Humans; D007225:Infant Food / Q000032:analysis*; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008460:Meat; D009566:Nitrates / Q000032:analysis*; D009573:Nitrites / Q000032:analysis; D013053:Spectrophotometry / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D009566:Nitrates; D009573:Nitrites