Chiral separations in food analysis

• Determination of chiral compounds is a very important topic in food analysis.
• Chiral compound analysis can study biological processes and adulterations.
• Conventional chromatographic methods (e.g., GC and HPLC) are the current tools.
• CE and CLC or nano-LC have been successfully used for chiral analysis.

Analysis and determination of enantiomers is attractive in food chemistry, as, for example, the presence of D-amino acids can indicate adulteration, as only the natural L-isomer should be present in fruit juices. We highlight the importance of analyzing enantiomers in food, describe the general principle of enantiomer resolution and review the main applications in the past five years in food and beverage analysis. We consider high-performance separation methods (gas and liquid chromatography) and recently developed miniaturized tools (capillary electromigration and nano liquid chromatography).