NIST Supports Accurate Food Labeling with New Standard Reference Material for Fat

NIST Standard Reference Material® 2386 Avocado Powder helps food manufacturers evaluate their methods for determining the elements, vitamins, amino acids, fatty acids, and proximates in their products, and can be used for quality assurance, such as when assigning values to in-house control materials.

This is one of the many NIST reference materials that support accurate food product labelling: It is approximately 50% fat, filling in a spot in the food-matrix triangle of fat, protein, and carbohydrates. Food manufacturers choose reference materials on the triangle that are close to their products in fat/protein/carbohydrate ratio to check the accuracy of their analytical methods and instrumentation.

A unit of SRM 2386 consists of five packets, each containing approximately 10 g of freeze-dried avocado powder. SRM 2386 is provided with NIST-certified values for nutritional elements and vitamins and related analytes. A NIST certified value is a value for which NIST has the highest confidence in its accuracy in that all known or suspected sources of bias and variability have been taken into account. Non-certified values are included for an additional three elements and individual and total fatty acids;  proximates including ash, fiber, and sugars; folates and fat-soluble vitamins; and calories.

Learn more:

Phillips, M.M.; Wood, L.J.; Browning, J.F.; Caceres, G.C.; Hahm, G.E.; Hanaee, M.; Lee, A.; Murphy, K.E.; Oflaz, R.; Paul, R.; Place, B.J.; Thomas, J.B.; Yen, J.; Certification of Standard Reference Material® 2386 Avocado Powder; NIST Special Publication (NIST SP) 260-213 (2021); available at https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.260-213.pdf