Profiling B-vitamins as quality markers of shelf-life and nutritional status of foods

• B-vitamin content was explored as a quality marker of product freshness. • Storage environments investigated had significant impact on B-vitamin stability. • B-vitamin stability was correlated with microbial growth, another quality factor. • Nicotinamide could be used as a marker of nutritional quality. Shelf-life of foods is traditionally determined using microbial and organoleptic assessments. However, the nutritional composition of foods, and specifically vitamin composition, remains largely unevaluated and fails to be considered a quality marker of foods, despite being vulnerable to degradation. In this study we profiled B-vitamins (thiamine, riboflavin, nicotinamide and pyridoxine) in a vegetable matrix stored for 5-days under different intrinsic and extrinsic environments. The investigation showed all B-vitamins were significantly unstable (losses between 32.2% - 100%) depending on storage environment (temperature, oxygen levels and pH) and significant changes to B-vitamin content was correlated (e.g. r s = -.927, p < 0.05) with microbial growth. In all storage environments where microbial growth reached spoilage levels (TVC > 10 7 CFU/g), nicotinamide was the only vitamin that was completely exhausted. Therefore, we have shown that B-vitamins, particularly nicotinamide could be used as an overall indicator of nutritional quality.