Quality Control of Beverages for Health Safety: Starting from Laboratory to the Point-of-Care Detection Techniques

Abstract Beverages are a class of liquid food item intended for human consumption to satisfy thirst but play important roles in human culture. Therefore, beverage contamination or fraud is also very popular and always occur with frightening predictability. According to the literature, beverages adulteration includes addition of toxic substances, like melamine, formaldehyde, urea, pesticides, metal ions, and various microorganisms exceeding a threshold value. Besides this, use of nanoparticles in consumer products has also increased in recent era as contaminants. Novel analytical methods have been proposed for the determination of these contaminants to assure the food safety and avoid health risks to consumers. Herein, in this chapter, we have summarized all the progresses made in the quality control in the beverages field by dividing the major contaminants into four categories: organic, inorganic, nanoparticles, and microorganisms for an easy understanding. A critical discussion has also been given on the progress, failure, and future of these sensing/separation methods for real-time applications.