August
11, 2014
SAN
FRANCISCO, Aug. 11, 2014 — Coffee drinkers beware: Surprise ingredients that
are neither sweet nor flavorful may be hiding in your coffee, and growing
coffee shortages may increase the chance of having these fillers in your cup of
joe in the future. The good news is that a highly accurate test is in the works
to quickly find coffee containing unwanted fillers before the beverage reaches
stores and restaurants.
These extra ingredients, though not harmful,
make ground coffee go farther and increase profits for producers, according to
researchers. Their report will be part of the 248th National Meeting
& Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific
society. The meeting features nearly 12,000 reports and is being held here
through Thursday.
A test to detect counterfeit coffees is
becoming more important in light of growing shortages in regions, such as
Brazil, where droughts and plant diseases have dramatically cut back coffee
supplies. “With a lower supply of coffee in the market, prices rise, and that
favors fraud because of the economic gain,” says research team leader Suzana
Lucy Nixdorf, Ph.D.
In 2012, a study from the U.K.’s Royal Botanic
Gardens and the Environment stated that 70 percent of the world’s coffee supply
might disappear by 2080 because of conditions caused by climate change. But
shortages due to more immediate issues already are occurring. The coffee-rich
country of Brazil typically produces 55 million bags of coffee each year. But
according to some reports, the projected amount for 2014 will likely only reach
45 million bags after this January’s extensive drought. That’s about 42 billion
fewer cups of coffee for this year.
Now, however, Nixdorf and her team at State University of Londrina in Brazil have developed a way to nip coffee counterfeiting in the bud.
“With our test, it is now possible to know
with 95 percent accuracy if coffee is pure or has been tampered with, either
with corn, barley, wheat, soybeans, rice, beans, acai seed, brown sugar or
starch syrup,” she says. The problem, she explains, is that “after roasting and
grinding the raw material, it becomes impossible to see any difference between
grains of lower cost incorporated into the coffee, especially because of the
dark color and oily texture of coffee.”
In new research, the team is now analyzing
several fillers that are considered impurities rather than adulterants. These
impurities can even be parts of the coffee plants, introduced at harvest, that
are not really supposed to be in the final product. Wood, twigs, sticks,
parchment, husks, whole coffee berries or even clumps of earth that are almost
the same color as coffee have been found. Identifying them is essential because
if there is a large amount of impurities, they were probably added purposefully
— not by accident, as some producers claim, says Nixdorf.
Currently, tests to detect these unwanted
additives require scientists to check the coffee, and those tests are
subjective –– not quantitative, she says. With these tests, the scientists look
at the coffee under a microscope or identify various additives by simply
tasting the coffee. In contrast, the new test uses liquid chromatography and
statistical tools. This gives her team a much closer look at the ingredients in
an unbiased way, according to Nixdorf. Chromatography is a powerful analytical
technique that is very sensitive and highly selective.
Because much of the coffee is composed of
carbohydrates, researchers could develop a “characteristic fingerprint” when
using chromatography that separates out the real coffee compounds, says
Nixdorf. The added, unwanted grain fillers generate different levels of sugars
than the natural ingredients, so they are easy to identify, she explains.
Nixdorf acknowledges funding from the
Government of Brazil’s Coordenação de
Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, Conselho
Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Financiadora de
Estudos e Projetos and Fundação
Araucária- Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico do Paraná
Productivity Scholarship.
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The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit
organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 161,000 members,
ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access
to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed
journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C.,
and Columbus, Ohio.
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The research will be presented at a meeting of the
American Chemical Society.
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