Quantification of sugars in breakfast cereals using capillary electrophoresis

About 80% of the Australian population consumes breakfast cereal (BC) at least five days a week. With high prevalence rates of obesity and other diet-related diseases, improved methods for monitoring sugar levels in breakfast cereals would be useful in nutrition research. The heterogeneity of the complex matrix of BCs can make carbohydrate analysis challenging or necessitate tedious sample preparation leading to potential sugar loss or starch degradation into sugars. A recently established, simple and robust free solution capillary electrophoresis (CE) method was used in a new application to 13 BCs (in Australia) and compared with several established methods for quantification of carbohydrates. Carbohydrates identified in BCs by CE included sucrose, maltose, glucose and fructose. The CE method is simple requiring no sample preparation or derivatization and carbohydrates are detected by direct UV detection. CE was shown to be a more robust and accurate method for measuring carbohydrates than Fehling method, DNS (3,5-dinitrosalicylic acid) assay and HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography).