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Elemental composition of organic and non-organic foods determined by PIXE

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Abstract

Nutrition and safety of foods is one of the more discussed topics in the modern society. We processed twenty food samples of the organic and non-organic origin in order to determine their elemental composition by the particle induced X-ray emission method. Except of some species (e.g., carrots), significant differences between the organic and non-organic types were not observed. Interestingly, the bananas’ pulps showed higher content of several elements (K, Ca, Sr) than their peels. Heavy metals (metalloids) were found to be below their limits of detection in the studied food samples.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge a support provided by the VEGA grant no. 1/0625/21, and by Advancing University Capacity and Competence in Research, Development and Innovation (ACCORD) ITMS2014 project no. 313021X329.

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  1. Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Centre for Nuclear and Accelerator Technologies (CENTA), Comenius University, 84248, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Jakub Kaizer, Miroslav Ješkovský, Jakub Kvasniak, Jakub Zeman & Pavel P. Povinec

  2. Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Medical Physics, Biophysics, Informatics and Telemedicine, Comenius University, 81372, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Ján Pánik

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  1. Jakub Kaizer
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Kaizer, J., Ješkovský, M., Kvasniak, J. et al. Elemental composition of organic and non-organic foods determined by PIXE. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 331, 1249–1259 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-022-08188-2

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