Indirect Determination of MCPD Fatty Acid Esters in Lipid Fractions of Commercially Available Infant Formulas for the Assessment of Infants’ Health Risk

MCPD esters are intensively investigated food lipid contaminants for over a decade. Concern related to their presence in various types of food products is related to the fact that possible free MCPD release from its esterified form during digestion may lead to elevated daily intake of these toxicants. Special attention should be devoted into powdered infant formulas, which contain significant amounts of refined vegetable oils, likely to contain high amounts of both 3-MCPD and 2-MCPD esters. Infants being fed with this type of food products only may intake risky amounts of these contaminants, which is a matter of great concern. This paper presents the quality assessment of commercially available powdered infant formulas with regard to MCPD esters presence. For estimating the levels of 3-MCPD and 2-MCPD fatty acid esters in lipid fractions of baby foods, methodology involving accelerated solvent extraction (optimized by response surface methodology) followed by SGS “3-in-1” procedure was applied. MCPD esters were detected in 23 per 24 investigated various types of powdered formulas (basic types, anticolic, antireflux, hypoalergic, lactose free, enriched with DHA, for prematures) offered by several suppliers. Detected levels of MCPD esters varied in the range of 0.13–4.80 mg kg −1 .