Abstract:

Furan is a food contaminant that can be detected in a number of heated foods, especially in canned foods.
Carbohydrates can generate furan by thermal degradation or Maillard reaction with amino acids. In order to explore the
effects of different amino acids on the generation of furan in glucose and galactose model systems, a series of amino acids
(glycine, serine, threonine and glutamic acid) were added to these model systems, which were afterwards heated in oil
bath at 121 ℃ for 30 min to simulate the sterilization of canned foods. Headspace-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry
(HS-GC-MS) was applied to detect the content of furan. The results demonstrated that the addition of a small amount of
glycine (≤ 5 mg), an extremely amount of serine (1 mg), and a large amount of threonine and glutamic acid (50 mg) could
significantly increase the formation of furan in glucose model system, while for the galactose model system, the addition of
all examined amino acids at large amounts (50 mg) showed promotion effect on the generation of furan. Among four examined
amino acids, threonine showed the most significant promotion effect on the generation of furan in glucose model system (P < 0.05).
As for galactose model system, both glycine and threonine could significantly increase the formation of furan.

Key words: furan, amino acid, glucose, galactose, Maillard reaction, headspace-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (HS-GC-MS)