Food and Nutritional Science, Applications of Magnetic Resonance

Within the food and nutrition sciences, magnetic resonance is widely applied to provide information on composition and structure of foods and their metabolic and sensorial impact on consumers. Food compositional applications range from profiling and identification to quantitative target analysis. The areas rely strongly on the unbiased and linear response of NMR for known and unknown molecular species in complex food products. Magnetic resonance applications for food structural assessment comprise the wide range of length scales and molecular mobilities that can be encountered within foods. At the lower length scales, liquid- and solid-state NMR techniques are deployed, and at the micro- and macrostructural length scales MRI has an established position. Within nutritional metabonomics, high-field NMR is now commonly used as a tool for comprehensive metabolic profiling of body fluids. Thus, NMR-based metabonomics has made critical contributions in defining human phenotypes and their response to diet. The noninvasive imaging capabilities of MRI have been deployed to investigate the sensorial and psychological impact of food on consumers.