Analysis of food polyphenols by ultra high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry: An overview

Phenolic compounds, which are widely distributed in plant-derived foods, recently attracted much attention due to their health benefits, so their determination in food samples is a topic of increasing interest. In the last few years, the development of chromatographic columns packed with sub-2 μm particles and the modern high resolution mass spectrometry (MS) have opened up new possibilities for improving the analytical methods for complex sample matrices, such as ingredients, foods and biological samples. In addition, they have emerged as an ideal tool for profiling complex samples due to its speed, efficiency, sensitivity and selectivity. The present review addresses the use of the improved liquid chromatography (LC), ultra-high performance LC (UHPLC), coupled to MS or tandem MS (MS/MS) as the detector system for the determination of phenolic compounds in food samples. Additionally, the different strategies to extract, quantify the phenolic compounds and to reduce the matrix effect (%ME) are also reviewed. Finally, a briefly outline future trends of UHPLC–MS methods is commented.

► UHPLC opens new perspectives to determine phenolics in complex food samples.
► Higher resolution, higher efficiency and faster separations are achieved in UHPLC.
► UHPLC–MS allows developing rapid, sensitive and selective methods.
► Application of UHPLC–MS to determine phenolics in plant origin foods and feeds.