Food

Food manufacturers often promote their products as light or, such as in the case of cereal bars, healthy. If that is actually true, can only be verified by analyzing the nutritional values, a procedure which forms an important part of food quality control. The values of fat, saturated fatty acids, sugar and salt which are printed on the packaging represent an average of the content of each substance and relate to 100 ml respectively 100 g of the product. The cereal bars consist of a heterogeneous mixture of ingredients (nuts, raisins, oat flakes etc.), therefore the thorough homogenization of the sample is required to obtain meaningful analysis results.

Most sample materials can be ground to the required analytical fineness at room temperature. However, there are limits, for example when even a small temperature increase affects the sample in a negative way; or when the material is very elastic and will only be deformed. Moreover, food samples which are fatty or sticky may block the mill. Therefore, cryogenic grinding is the best way to pulverize food samples like cheese, raisins, wine gum or marzipan which simply clump together when ground at room temperature.