Influencing factors on bread-derived exposure to ochratoxin A: type, origin and composition

摘要

The nearly ubiquitous consumption of cereals all over the world renders them an important position ininternational nutrition, but concurrently allocates exposure to possible contained contaminants. Mycotoxinsare natural food contaminants, difficult to predict, evade, and reduce, so it is important to establishthe real contribution of each contaminated food product, with the aim to evaluate mycotoxin exposure.This was the key objective of this survey and analysis for ochratoxin A content on 274 samples of commercializedbread in the Portuguese market, during the winter 2007. Different bread products were analyzedthrough an HPLC-FD method, including traditional types, novel segments, and different grain basedbread products. A wide-ranging low level contamination was observed in all regions and types of breadproducts analyzed, especially in the Porto and Coimbra regions, and in the maize and whole-grain orfiber-enriched bread. Nevertheless, the exposure through contaminated wheat bread continues to bethe most significant, given its high consumption and dominance in relation to the other types of bread.