Overview
This product development study fermented rapeseed meal for 72 hours and used it with cooked carrot to make three veggie burger variants, then tested microbial quality and nutritional composition. Cadmium, lead and mercury were measured only in the rapeseed meal before and after fermentation, and all were below the quantification limits. The burgers themselves were not tested for metals.
Key numbers
- Rapeseed meal, non-fermented and fermented: cadmium < 0.003 mg/kg, lead < 0.020 mg/kg, mercury < 0.001 mg/kg (Table 1; limits of quantification).
- Authors’ conclusion: no risk from cadmium, lead or mercury because all values were below detectable levels (p. 4).
Methods (brief)
Cadmium and lead by flame atomic absorption following PN-EN 14082:2004; mercury by direct mercury analyzer (AMA 254). The methods text gives detection limits of 0.003 mg/kg for cadmium, 0.001 mg/kg for lead and 0.02 mg/kg for mercury, which do not match the limits printed in Table 1 for lead and mercury. No reference material or recovery is reported.
Evidence Fitness
Non-detects in one farm’s rapeseed meal, with unclear replicate numbers and inconsistent limits. The burgers were not analyzed, so this is a proxy for veggie burgers: it shows only that this protein ingredient was below quantification limits. The PDF is the online-first version without volume or pages.