A hybrid electronic tongue for direct classification of baby liquid foods with or without gluten

People suffering from celiac disease are gluten intolerant and inadvertent ingestion of gluten proteins must be avoided. Several techniques have been proposed to detect/quantify gluten proteins in foodstuffs: immunochemical methods, mass tandem spectrometry and polymerase chain reaction as well as gluten sensors [1]. Recently, a potentiometric electronic tongue (ET) with lipo/polymeric membranes has been used to detect gliadins, which are gluten proteins, in foodstuffs [2]. However, the use of these techniques requires the previous extraction of gluten proteins. This step can be a possible drawback since it is not possible to guarantee that the extraction has a 100% yield since the protein types overlap in solubility and extractability [3]. In this work, the feasibility of a hybrid multi-sensor ET, which combines repeated cross-sensitivity and ion selective sensors (Fig. 1), to discriminate gluten-free and gluten-containing liquid baby foods has been evaluated. The device was constructed using a screenprinted technique and directly applied in the liquid infant food samples. No extraction or dilution/dissolution step was required. In total, 5 “gluten-free” and 10 “glutencontaining” liquid baby foods of different flavors were purchased at local supermarkets and analyzed.

A hybrid electronic tongue for direct classification of baby liquid foods with or without gluten Conference Paper