Reproducible Sample Preparation of Reliable Food Analysis

Food occurs in a great variety of consistencies and is often inhomogeneous.
Food testing labs require representative samples to produce meaningful and reproducible analysis results. Therefore, food samples must be homogenized and pulverized to the required analytical fineness, ideally with as little time and effort as possible. Furthermore, reliable analytical results can only be obtained if the entire sample preparation process is carried out reproducibly. This means that the prepared part sample, from which usually only a few grams or milligrams are required for analysis, needs to represent the laboratory sample as well as the original sample from which the laboratory sample was extracted. An inhomogeneous sample
does not represent the original material because some components may be overrepresented or missing altogether. Consequently, a homogeneous sample is the basis for reliable and representative analytical results.