Descrição
People suffering from celiac disease are gluten intolerant and inadvertent ingestion of
gluten proteins must be avoided. Several techniques have been proposed to
detect/quantify gluten proteins in foodstuffs: immunochemical methods, mass tandem
spectrometry and polymerase chain reaction as well as gluten sensors [1]. Recently, a
potentiometric electronic tongue (ET) with lipo/polymeric membranes has been used to
detect gliadins, which are gluten proteins, in foodstuffs [2]. However, the use of these
techniques requires the previous extraction of gluten proteins. This step can be a
possible drawback since it is not possible to guarantee that the extraction has a 100%
yield since the protein types overlap in solubility and extractability [3]. In this work,
the feasibility of a hybrid multi-sensor ET, which combines repeated cross-sensitivity
and ion selective sensors (Fig. 1), to discriminate gluten-free and gluten-containing
liquid baby foods has been evaluated. The device was constructed using a screenprinted
technique and directly applied in the liquid infant food samples. No extraction
or dilution/dissolution step was required. In total, 5 “gluten-free” and 10 “glutencontaining”
liquid baby foods of different flavors were purchased at local supermarkets
and analyzed.