Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) based detection schemes for food analysis The development of food industry over the last century broadened the range of available food products and increased the awareness of society regarding the importance of a healthy diet. As a direct consequence of this norms and regulation regarding the composition of different products were formulated and are enforced. Still different food products have a very short shelf life (i.e. fruits and vegetable) and accordingly their analysis should be performed in a time and price effective way while maintaining a high standard for the quality and reliability of the analysis. The current gold standard analytical technique for most of the food products is high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) combined with different detection schemes such as UV Vis spectroscopy fluorescence spectroscopy or mass spectrometry. There are however analytes where HPLC based measurements encounter difficulties and research is still needed in order to overcome these. For those molecules analysis based on biological assays are applied as reference analytical method. ...