Metabolomics approach of infant formula for the evaluation of contamination and degradation using hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry

•Quality assessment of infant formula was performed by HILIC–ESI/TOF/MS metabolomics.•PCA showed significant differences in classification, contamination and degradations.•Unexpected contamination of melamine can be evaluated by metabolomics approach.•Nicotinic acid and nicotinamide were identified by metabolomics approach for degradation marker.

In this study including the field of metabolomics approach for food, the evaluation of untargeted compounds using HILIC–ESI/TOF/MS and multivariate statistical analysis method is proposed for the assessment of classification, contamination and degradation of infant formula. HILIC mode is used to monitor more detected numbers in infant formulas in the ESI-positive scan mode than the reversed phase. The repeatability of the non-targeted contents from 4 kinds of infant formulas based on PCA was less than the relative standard deviation of 15% in all groups. The PCA pattern showed that significant differences in the classification of types and origins, the contamination of melamine and the degradations for one week were evaluated using HILIC–ESI/TOF/MS. In the S-plot from the degradation test, we could identify two markers by comparison to standards as nicotinic acid and nicotinamide. With this strategy, the differences from the untargeted compounds could be utilized for quality and safety assessment of infant formula.