Capsaicinoids in Food: An Update on Pretreatment and Analysis Methods since 2010

Abstract

Capsaicinoids, whose basic chemical structure is the vanilla amide of n-nonanoic acid, are responsible for chili pepper fruits' spicy flavor (pungency) and multiple pharmacological actions. Capsaicinoids are widely used to produce intense flavor food additives due to their sensory attributes of pungency, aroma, and color. To ensure strict quality control for capsaicinoids and maximize their positive effects, valid and sensitive pretreatment and determination methods are urgently needed. Consequently, this review provides a comprehensive summary of capsaicinoids’ preparation and analytical technologies in food samples. Pretreatment techniques mainly include liquid-liquid extraction, solid-phase extraction, solid-phase microextraction, and dispersive solid-phase microextraction, among others. Detection methods include liquid chromatography coupled with different detectors, gas chromatography, electrochemical sensor methods, capillary electrophoresis, etc. Furthermore, the advantages and disadvantages of various pretreatment and analytical methods are compared and discussed. Thus, the present paper has attempted to shed light on novel and traditionalpretreatment methods and determination approaches and provided proper comments about their new developments and applications.

Graphic abstract

Keywords:

• Analytical methods
• food
• capsaicinoids
• pretreatment
• update

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Table 3. GC methods for capsaicinoids.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Scientific Research Project of the Department of Education of Liaoning Province (ZF2019036).

Notes on contributors

Zheng Cheng

Zheng Cheng: Writing–review & editing. Zhi-Feng Wen: Writing–review & editing. Zhi-Fei Liu: Supervision. Yuan Zhang: Writing–review & editing, Conceptualization. Yu Zhou: Conceptualization, Supervision. Xue-Song Feng: Conceptualization, Validation.

Zhi-Feng Wen

Zheng Cheng: Writing–review & editing. Zhi-Feng Wen: Writing–review & editing. Zhi-Fei Liu: Supervision. Yuan Zhang: Writing–review & editing, Conceptualization. Yu Zhou: Conceptualization, Supervision. Xue-Song Feng: Conceptualization, Validation.

Zhi-Fei Liu

Zheng Cheng: Writing–review & editing. Zhi-Feng Wen: Writing–review & editing. Zhi-Fei Liu: Supervision. Yuan Zhang: Writing–review & editing, Conceptualization. Yu Zhou: Conceptualization, Supervision. Xue-Song Feng: Conceptualization, Validation.

Yuan Zhang

Zheng Cheng: Writing–review & editing. Zhi-Feng Wen: Writing–review & editing. Zhi-Fei Liu: Supervision. Yuan Zhang: Writing–review & editing, Conceptualization. Yu Zhou: Conceptualization, Supervision. Xue-Song Feng: Conceptualization, Validation.

Yu Zhou

Zheng Cheng: Writing–review & editing. Zhi-Feng Wen: Writing–review & editing. Zhi-Fei Liu: Supervision. Yuan Zhang: Writing–review & editing, Conceptualization. Yu Zhou: Conceptualization, Supervision. Xue-Song Feng: Conceptualization, Validation.

Xue-Song Feng

Zheng Cheng: Writing–review & editing. Zhi-Feng Wen: Writing–review & editing. Zhi-Fei Liu: Supervision. Yuan Zhang: Writing–review & editing, Conceptualization. Yu Zhou: Conceptualization, Supervision. Xue-Song Feng: Conceptualization, Validation.