What's the difference between using a mass spectrometer vs. a spectrophotometer to analyze food?

Question

I'm learning about spectroscopy and it's applications in food production/analysis

i'm supposed to be focusing on optical analysis so I need to know about spectrophotometers. I'm just not sure when mass spectrometers come into play

Answer 1

it is a quite long storry...

spectrophotometry is relatively good when you deal with a known substance present in substantial quantities

MS is helpful to detrmine something in small quantities or unknown

not all sunstances have characteristic absorption in optical range, often they are masked by other substances

also, MS itself (unlike GC-MS) does not give any idea of concentration, but a pretty good source of information about structures