Homogenization of breakfast cereals using cryogenic grinding

Ready-to-eat breakfast cereals are important source of micronutrients despite the losses of these elements during processing. From an analytical point of view, these materials are complex heterogeneous samples containing as many as 13 constituents. It is critical that the sample be representative and grinding of the sample is essential before taking a sub-sample for subsequent steps in the analytical procedure. In this work the use of cryogenic grinding was studied as a fast and effective procedure for sample comminution and homogenization. This procedure is efficient and the powders obtained were acid-digested using a microwave-assisted procedure. Iron, manganese, and zinc were determined by flame atomic absorption spectrometry. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.