Welcome to food specification maps! Food specification maps are currently being developed in the EU project TRACE by maritech and Geochem Research. The idea is that by determining three key isotope rates of a mineral water sample you can determine to some precision the origin of the water -- and therefore confirm that you have bought the right water. Although this requires a laboratory and is currently limited to water, the scientists in TRACE are already working on solutions for that.
Quality assurance exercise
Sometimes following the product flow is not an option. This is why currently scientist are working on other methods to determine the origin of food. One method that works particularly well for some food items, are food maps.
Food maps are based on the fact that the levels of certain isotopes or isotope ratios can be assigned to a particular location. By combining several such parameters one can limit the possible origins of the food item to few or even one location.
In a recent double blind test, scientist of the TRACE project were able to identify with absolute certainty a particular mineral water from Spain from under 20 samples of mineral water from all over Europe.
Why don’t you see for yourself?
You may use the following samples as example:
| δ2H: -81.3 | δ18O: -11.3 | δ87Sr: 0.7321 | (prefill) |
| δ2H: -35.1 | δ18O: -6.78 | δ87Sr: 0.7082 | (prefill) |
| δ2H: -44.7 | δ18O: -7.12 | δ87Sr: 0.7088 | (prefill) |