Using Infrared Radiation to measure burger fat content

Abstract

The objective of this research is to develop a low cost non invasive method to measure fat content in burgers using Near-Infrared Radiation (NIR) sensor. The results of the fat measurement from this non invasive method were then compared to the results of fat measurement using a proven method. The Soxhlet method is a standard fat measurement procedure recommended by the Association of Official Analytical Chemist (AOAC). The samples used in this investigation are beef and fish burgers. The experimental results showed that there is correlation between fat content and the output voltage from the infrared sensor. This indicates that fat measurement using the infrared measurement technique can be used to determine fat content in burgers with reasonable accuracy by controlling several parameters such as ambient temperature, surrounding light, thickness and water content of the samples.