Lebensmittelwissenschaften - Food Science - Morlock Lab

How to make this planar development of heart-shaped compound zones?
Become an expert!

 

Unabhängige Gesundheitsberatung

Das gibt es noch! In Gießen!
Mehr im Vortrag über "Lebensmittelbetrug und Lebensmittelsicherheit – Strategien gegen Täuschung" sowie weitere interessante Vorträge auf der UGB-Tagung 2026 am 8./9. Mai in Gießen.

 

LCGC interview

Read more in the paper...

 

My skin is mine!

We dare to go to work every morning without a brand flavor signature, but with a smile. 
Our fragrance research findings are put into practice.
We’re currently practicing being a fragrance-free work group. 
A concept for school classes to be fragrance-free, as younger people are more susceptible to hazardous compounds. 
No marketing strategy on our largest organ unless the products are free of hazardous compounds!
Awaiting the first company that sells hazard-free care products… we have the necessary methods to verify this.

 

FAZ-Interview

Interview mit Sascha Zoske über Schadstoffe in Produkten, F.A.Z./Rhein-Main-Zeitung – FAZ.NET, 14.04.2026, Seite 6 oder online

 

Pressemitteilung

Why a press release on unmasking mutagens in food and cosmetics? 
If a topic is urgent, mankind should know:
https://idw-online.de/de/news867718 (D), JLU homepage
https://idw-online.de/de/news867719 (E)

 

Analytica 2026

About 35.000 visitors from about 115 countries (40% from abroad) took the opportunity to meet the analytical innovations in Munich on 24.-27.03.2026! It is the world-leading trade show with a comprehensive and exciting supporting program, such as the analytica conference. About 1,130 exhibitors traveled from 40 countries and regions (56% from abroad; besides Germany, mainly from China, USA, Italy, UK...) 

 

Duties during the 3-day stay:

• Professorentreffen Analytik
• Lecture at Biotech Forum: Metabolite screening of cell culture supernatants at line using 2LabsToGo-Eco - TUE 12:00, A3.527
• LCGC Interview
• Moderation of the Live Lab: WED 10-11 + 12-13, and THU 12-13 + 14-15 + 16-17, B2.333
• Lecture at Analytica Conference, Session on Green Analytical Labs of the Future: Dematerialization of 2 labs into the sustainable 2LabsToGo-Eco - WED 16:00, ICM Saal 3
• Round Table Discussion on green labs: WED 16:30, ICM Saal 3
• Female Leadership Meeting

It was great to talk to my former excellent doctoral student Dr. Tamara Best (née Schreiner) at the PerkinElmer booth.

Female Leadership Meeting

 

Powerful knowledge and tools for better decisions!

Join our yearly digital course on 16.-20.03.2026

Knowledge is power. Therefore, a powerful analytical prioritization strategy is key. It identifies all hazardous compounds (known and unknown, xenogenic and natural) in a complex sample that affect the environment and humans. Prevention and precaution are brilliant proactive means, but they need powerful tools to discover sources of emerging hazards. The separation of complex samples combined with the biological or toxicological effect detection can provide answers to analytically very challenging questions, such as:

• Are foods, feeds, food supplements, ingredients, nutraceuticals, etc., safe to be eaten? Or should we precautionarily avoid the ones that show an adverse effect?
• How can healthier foods be designed? Is nutrition less adverse based on regionally, bio-dynamically produced foods than highly processed food products, such as formulations made from a mixture of chemicals purchased from somewhere on the global market?
• Is our drinking water safe to drink? Which xenogenic compounds are in drinking and surface waters? How contaminated are environmental samples? How can we avoid contaminating, and how can we decontaminate our environment or wastewater?
• Are the cosmetics safe to be applied to your skin? Are personal care products necessary, or is it better to avoid these and let the skin do the job? Do washing, rinse-off, and cleansing products containing many chemicals disturb the microflora of the skin?
• Are perfume and other lifestyle products hazard-free and safe for use?
• Are commodities safe? Are chemicals leaking or migrating from packaging into the products?

We were a group of 22 attendees. You were so fantastic!!
I enjoyed your questions and the discussions during this intense week! Thank you so much!

 

Read more about essential oils

The latest book review of Prof. Dr. Alfred Hagen Meyer on "Essential Oils Unveiled: Complex Compositions for Food, Cosmetics, and Medicine" in the Behr's Deutsche Lebensmittel-Rundschau journal:

"Essential oils are natural complex substances, complex mixtures derived from plants, animals, and minerals, as they occur in nature and also as preparations derived from them. Research into such complex plant mixtures offers new opportunities for the development of active plant-based medicines and biologically active resources for humans, animals, and plants. This is particularly important as single-substance remedies such as antibiotics are reaching their therapeutic limits. The book "Essential Oils Unveiled" provides a concise overview of essential oils as natural complex substances, their analytical and galenic properties, their use in veterinary medicine and human aromatherapy, as well as their role in the cosmetics and food industries. Jörg Heilmann and Gertrud Morlock, for example, address analytical methods for evaluating essential oils, verifying specifications, and detecting adulteration."

The Multicomponent Mixtures Initiative of the Integrative Medicine & Pharmacy Foundation brings together scientists and therapists from universities, colleges, and companies who have set themselves the goal of actively researching integrative therapeutic methods.

 

Food Chemistry Regional Meeting

The Food Chemistry Regional Meeting took place in Giessen on 17./18.03.2026.
Annika Haase and Bastian Loderhose presented their results on non-target effect-directed safety analysis of CBD oils and different fungal cultivation forms (supernatant, fruiting body, submerged, aerial) with great success!

The 2LabsToGo-Eco was presented as a poster and in operation by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schwack.

 

Forum LABO in Lyon

It was a pleasure to meet the highly active AFSEP analysts and challenge their minds aside the scientific session at Forum LABO in Lyon on 10./11.03.2026!

 

Interview about preservatives

 

Sensory modules MP-159 and MP-160

Our sensory block modules took place for the 9th time in cooperation with the DLG on 2.-6. and 9.-13.03.2026!

The outstanding Dr. Derndorfer inspired us with her expertise and experience.
A big thank you to the highly treasured presentations of industrial Guest Lecturers:
Dr. Derndorfer    J. Ehrke-Böhm, Ferrero    Dr. Heidebach, ADM Wild    A. Kessel, Symrise

Weeks in advance, calculations and tours to empty the different shops in Gießen for specific products we needed for the comparative tasting. Every year we have to adjust the exercises to product changes: not available anymore, changed package sizes, and/or too expensive now, etc.

Then, sensory tasting exercises were conducted in parallel for 113 students.
Everything went well — a big thank you to all the highly interested students, the great organizing team, and the treasured support of DLG!

Backstage impressions: the highly motivated organizing team prepared a myriad of measured and coded pieces well-positioned on trays.

Impressions on the human assembly line (hidden inside the Hörsaal C2) for tray supply...

The human assembly line managed to deliver all the trays to the well-performing students within about 10 min (!) to start the next round of sensory tasting exercises in the lecture hall:

Rainer Schramm, DLG, and I took a second to be happy that all worked fine...

The lecture hall was completely full, given the need for some distance between the students for the trays and paperwork.

 

PhD defense on Sustainable School Development

Congratulations to Monika Bauer, who successfully defended her cumulative dissertation on Nachhaltige Schulentwicklung – Inkrementelle Konzepte für gesunde Ernährungsgewohnheiten und nachhaltige Transformation des Schulalltags in March. The strong influence of educational institutions, such as schools, on social change and on the integration of health and sustainability principles into everyday life should not be underestimated. She explored how a sustainable school development could be implemented and developed incremental concepts for healthy eating habits and sustainable transformation of everyday school life: for the first time, concrete implementation problems, creative freedom, and new fields of application on the path to becoming a certified School of Sustainability were analysed and reported.

PhD committee members, together with Monika Bauer, after the successful defense

 

Practical course BP-010 on Food Chemistry

Students interested in food chemistry can choose this hands-on course, which includes a range of experiments using wet chemistry, HPTLC, HPLC, and GC to study foods and lifestyle products. Cutting-edge science is integrated into this course: students performed on-surface effect-directed analysis (planar bioassays) and used the 2LabsToGo-Eco, the most sustainable lab of the future.
Dematerialization quiz: Where are the tiny 2LabsToGo-Eco systems in the lab, a green zero-energy solution for analytics, dematerializing the infrastructure of two fully equipped labs into a portable 10-kg system powered by solar panels?

 

 

 

 

 

PhD defense on in-the-start-zone metabolization (nanoGIT)

Congratulations to Isabel Müller, who successfully defended her cumulative dissertation on the Development of on-surface metabolisation systems for food analysis in February. Her PhD research further explored the potential of an all-in-one start-zone-metabolization analysis, as first shown in Anal. Chim. Acta 1129, 2020, 76-84 and Anal. Chim. Acta 1154, 2021, 33830. Simulated metabolic processes on the start zone were combined with subsequent parallel planar chromatographic separation of complex samples on the same separation surface and biological detection using planar bioassays to prioritize bioactive compounds. She has made significant progress in the field of start-zone enzymatic metabolization methods and has contributed to improved analytics, greater innovation, and a better understanding of bioactive compounds in food and their changes through metabolization.

 

The reviewers and the Chair, together with Isabel, after the successful defense

 

Indiana Jones-like presentation of doctoral research work

Auf der Jagd nach den verborgenen Schadstoffen haben Annika Haase CBD-Öle (Wie sicher sind CBD-Öle?) und Max Haumann (HPTLC und die Suche nach den verborgenen Schadstoffen) Schokolade und Kosmetika bzw. Pflegeprodukte untersucht und den Schatz der verborgenen Schadstoffe für einen zukünftigen besseren Verbraucherschutz geborgen. Diese Forschungsergebnisse wurden erfolgreich auf dem 36. Doktorandenseminar des Arbeitskreises Separation Science vom 11.–13.01.2026 im verschneiten Hohenroda, Hessen, vorgetragen und verteidigt. Höchst souverän und zudem sehr anschaulich und unterhaltsam gemeistert – Gratulation!

 

Planare Bioassays sind auch für die Forensik interessant

Die Gesellschaft für Toxikologische und Forensische Chemie (GTFCh) hatte mich eingeladen, einen Beitrag im Mitteilungsblatt der GTFCh zum aktuellen Stand und Potential der HPTLC-planare Bioassay-HRMS-Methodik zu schreiben. In der allerersten Ausgabe von 1976 erschien der Beitrag „Zur Standardisierung der Dünnschichtchromatographie" von Dr. James Bäumler. Seitdem sind 50 Jahre vergangen und die Methodik ist nach wie vor für die Forensik interessant. Lieben Dank für die Einladung! Schnelle Enttarnung von unbekannten Schadstoffen in der Toxikologie mit wirkungsbezogener non-target Hochleistungs-Dünnschichtchromatographie, Toxichem Krimtech 93 (2026) 13-28

"Nichts setzt dem Fortgang der Wissenschaft mehr Hindernis entgegen, als wenn man zu wissen glaubt, was man noch nicht weiß."
G. C. Lichtenberg, 1742-1799

 

Vacancy - update: closed!

Wer mit uns die Welt erforschen und verändern möchte: Wir haben eine PhD-Stelle offen! Wissen ist Macht. Analytik ist die Basis allen Wissens! Wir benötigen Verstärkung!

 

Our key drivers

"Qui veut faire quelque chose trouve un moyen, qui ne veut rien faire trouve une excuse."
Albert Camus, 1913-1960

• Be challenging in mind: think differently, yet mindfully and disruptively to invent and progress, challenge the status quo, and push the boundaries of analytical thinking.
• Be inspiring in mind: analytical science is the basis of our knowledge; create sustainable and powerful analytical solutions, making a difference.
• Be curious in mind: listen and observe to challenge your fantasy that drives your imagination and creativity.
• Be progressive in mind: change your perspectives, and you will find a better way to solve it.
• Be a problem solver: it boosts your motivation.
• Be beautiful in mind: leave it better than you found it!

 

Wishing you a happy new year and all the best for 2026!

Wenn's alte Jahr erfolgreich war, dann freue dich aufs neue.
Und war es schlecht, ja dann erst recht.
Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein once said: "If the old year was successful, then look forward to the new one. And if it was bad, then even more so." Very pragmatic as he was. Can't every day, even every thought, be a new beginning for good?

Among the great personalities who have researched, taught, and studied at JLU are not Einstein, but Justus Liebig (!), Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (Nobel Prize for Physics 1901), Wangari Maathai (Nobel Peace Prize 2004), Volker Bouffier (former Minister President of Hesse), Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Federal President) and many more scientists who made the world a better place.

Glasses full of sparkling wine for a New Year's cheers with you!
How to make this planar development? Become an expert!