Migration from Plastic Materials into Bread and Cream in Comparison with the Migration into the Food Simulants Water, Tenax® and Ethanol-Water-Mixtures

Migration from plastic materials is normally measured in food simulants not in the food itself. The more simple matrix of the simulant compared to the food simplifies the analysis of the migrants, makes it reproducible, and, in a lot of cases, analysis is only feasible in simulants. The media used to simulate the migration behaviour of foodstuffs should show similar interactions with the plastic materials as the foodstuffs itself. The official simulant according to the EU-Directive 87/572/EEC "list of simulants" is water for bread as well as for cream. But it has been shown previously that water is too weak to simulate the packaging interactions with these foods. The aim of this study was to investigate correlations of the migration behaviour of different simulants and the foodstuffs bread and cream leading to proposals for suitable simulants for bread and cream. The migration of test substances from a HDPE-film into sunflower bread (90 % rye, 10 % wheat, with 3 % ground sunflower seeds; 1,8 % fat), butter toast (100 % wheat; 4 % fat) and cream (32 % fat) was compared to the migration into water, 10 % ethanol, 50 % ethanol and 85 % ethanol and onto Tenax® . An HDPE-film, doped with 6 test substances of different polarity and volatility, was produced and brought into contact with the simulants and the foods, respectively. The migration kinetics of the test substances were determined in the time range of 0 to 20 days at 23 °C. Water and also 10 % ethanol underestimated the migration into bread and cream. The migration onto Tenax® showed a good correlation with that into bread. For cream 85 % ethanol proved to be a suitable simulant.