CSIRO able to identify origin of gluten in foods

Scientists from Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, can now detect gluten in any food and show which grain it comes from, making it easier for food companies to correctly label their products.

Gluten from rye can now be detected, completing the ‘Grand Slam’ of gluten-containing grains. CSIRO was the first to detect specific glutens in the other three gluten grains – wheat in 2015, barley in 2016, and oats in 2018.

Current commercial tests can only tell that gluten is present in a food but not the grain it is from, CSIRO said. The detection kits currently available also give variable results of how much gluten is present.

Protein analytics expert with CSIRO, Professor Michelle Colgrave said, “Being able to detect any protein in diverse foods and beverages will help food companies ensure that what’s in the pack is what’s on the pack, and help consumers trust pack labelling around gluten-free claims.”

“This technology offers many applications for the food industry from helping track contamination in their raw ingredient supply chain, to improving product quality, food safety and meeting regulations.”

The researchers analysed 20 cultivars of rye from 12 countries. The rye was milled into flour, the gluten proteins extracted and then identified and quantified with high-resolution mass spectrometry.

The analysis revealed six proteins specific to all rye varieties but which don’t appear in other grains. The team also tested a range of commercial flours, breakfast cereals and snack foods and detected the six rye proteins in all the foods that contained rye as a labelled ingredient.

They found one “gluten-free” breakfast cereal that contained trace amounts of rye, which did not appear on the ingredients list, and one sample of flour from the wheat-related grain, spelt, which was contaminated with about 2% rye.

Next steps are to validate the method’s ability to accurately quantify the level of glutens present in a food and work with the food industry and commercial testing laboratories to help commercialise the technology.

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The research has been published in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Proteome Research at https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jproteome.9b00314.