Chemical and toxicological studies of products resulting from sorbic acid and methylamine interaction in food conditions

Sorbic acid has a system of conjugated double bonds which makes it able to undergo nucleophilic addition reactions with certain functions. The interac tions between sorbic acid and an amine present in the endogenous constituen ts of food were quantified. We demonstrated the formation of new products a nd studied the underlying mechanisms using ethyl sorbate and various amines . HPLC, GC, GC-SM and NMR analyses of the reaction mixes enabled the isolat ion and identification of the products. The addition reactions led, at 20 d egrees C, to linear monoadducts and, at 50 degrees C, to cyclic derivatives resulting from double addition. Mutagenesis studies, involving Ames test a nd genotoxicity studies with HeLa cells and on plasmid DNA, in cyclic inter action products, showed that none of the products studied presented neither mutagenic nor genotoxic activities.