M. Hirano et al., A TENTATIVE MEASUREMENT OF BROWN PIGMENTS IN VARIOUS PROCESSED FOODS, Bioscience, biotechnology, and biochemistry, 60(5), 1996, pp. 877-879
A tentative method for measuring brown pigment in food was proposed an
d applied to 25 items of commercial browned foods. The principle was b
ased on the assumption that any brown pigment with general absorption
in the visible wave-length spectrum is quantitatively equivalent to me
lanoidin prepared from a model system of the Maillard reaction. The sp
ectral curve for general absorption was represented by the equation dE
/d lambda = -kE (E, absorbance; lambda = wave length; k = constant > 0
), of which the value k was found to correlate with the molecular weig
ht and the molar extinction coefficient and to serve as an empirical p
arameter for the measurement of brown substances in different foods.