Journal of Food Composition and Analysis

The Journal of Food Composition and Analysis publishes high-quality research on the chemical composition, analytical methodologies, and data management of human foods. It welcomes original research, reviews, and methodological papers that contribute to the development, validation, and application of food composition data.

Research areas include:

- New methods for the chemical analysis of food, including advances in analytical techniques, instrumentation, and validation procedures to accurately determine food components.

- Nutrient, bioactive non-nutrient, and anti-nutrient components in food, focusing on the identification, quantification, and characterization of these components.

- Flavor and taste components in food, including the analysis of volatile and non-volatile compounds that contribute to sensory properties and consumer acceptance.

- Food composition database development, management, and utilization, encompassing data collection, standardization, quality assurance, and applications in research and industry.

The journal does not consider papers that primarily focus on:

• Microbiological, or antimicrobial assays.

• Sensory analysis, organoleptic characteristics, or physical and technological properties and engineering aspects of foods unrelated to composition.

• Food formulated in the laboratory, kitchen or pilot plant.

• Clinical, pharmacological, or therapeutic studies.

• Natural medicines or herbal extracts, nutraceuticals, and supplements.

• Food waste materials or by-products.

• Meta-analyses and systematic reviews.

• Non-targeted metabolomics studies lacking quantitative analytical data.

• Emerging food processing technologies lacking quantitative analytical data.

• Consumer sciences.

Development of analytical methods to detect food microbes.

Non-specific colorimetric assays, such as in-vitro antioxidant assays, total phenolic content and total flavonoid content.

Please also note the following additional requirements when preparing your paper:

• Newly developed analytical methods must be validated, with performance metrics (LOD, LOQ, analysis time, etc.) compared to existing methods, ideally in a table within the discussion.

• New methods should be validated against reference techniques like LC–MS.

• Food sample sizes should be large enough to be representative; analysing only one sample per food type is insufficient.

• Tentative GC-MS identifications require confirmation with reference standards, especially for key compounds. Ion mobility spectrometry is not an acceptable means of identification.

Calculations of odor activity values (OAVs) based on semi-quantitative headspace data are not valid.

The journal no longer publishes papers where the chemical, sensory, functional and/or health-promoting properties of individual food components (or groups of components) are the main topic studied.