Solutions to Trans Fatty

Acids Replacemet

Department of Food and Agricultural Product Technology, Faculty of Agricultural Technology,

Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta 55281, Indonesia

EPOC 2016, 5-6 October, Warsaw, Poland

Scope of Presentation

1. Trans fat : structure and function relationship

2. Source of trans fat

3. Options for reducing trans fat intake

4. Alternatives for trans fat replacement

5. Use of natural saturated vegetable oils

6. Recommendation

Triglyceride with all saturated fatty acids

Triglyceride with Sn-1 and Sn-2 saturated fatty acids, and Sn-3 monounsaturated fatty acids

Triglyceride with Sn-1 and Sn-2 saturated fatty acids, and Sn-3 trans fatty acids

Trans fat : structure and function relationship

Source of industrially produced trans fats (up to 60% of a product’s fat)

• Fast food: baked goods (e.g. pies, biscuits, pastries and sweet rolls);

• Biscuits; • Fried foods (e.g. French fries, hash browns, chicken nuggets,

some kebabs) • Supermarket products: ready-to-microwave popcorn; some

biscuits, wafers and baked goods, including tacos and tortillas • Fats and oils: shortening; partially hydrogenated oils; some

margarines (notably of an industrial nature)• Bakery products: pies; biscuits; sweet rolls; pastries; buns;

cakes

Naturally occurring trans-fatty acids (up to 6% of a product’s fat content )

• Ruminant animal products: meat- and milk-based products from, for example, cattle, sheep, goats, buffalo, deer, elk, giraffes and camels (Stender et al., 2008).

Options to reduce industrially produced trans fat intake

• Legislative limits on industrially produced trans fat content in consumable fat,

• Voluntary reductions by food industry actors in the use of industrially produced trans fat, or

• Mandatory labelling of industrially produced trans fat.

Option to remove industrially produced trans fat

• Removing industrially produced trans fats from the food supply is possibly one of the most straightforward public health interventions for reducing CVD risk and improving nutritional quality of diets.

Alternatives for industrially produced trans fat

• Several factors have limited the introduction of alternatives to trans fats into the marketplace: – (1) performance, – (2) availability, – (3) economics, and – (4) safety.

• Replacement products for trans fats must be able to provide at least the same functional characteristics of the materials they replace (Klonoff, 2007).

Modified Hydrogenation

• The food industry is in the process of searching for alternative oils to trans fats that can provide good flavor, deliver good performance, and be purchased at a good price.

• The standard hydrogenization process can be modified by altering the type of catalyst, the time of the reaction, or the temperature and pressure of the process.

• This hydrogenation approach would be expensive on a commercial scale.

Genetically Modified Seeds

• This approach can reduce or eliminate the concentrations of polyunsaturated oils, such as linoleic acid and linolenic acid.

• Selective breeding programs have created soybean seeds and sunflower seeds with very low levels of unsaturated oils(Cahoon and Shanklin, 2000).

• High-stearic (saturated fat) and high-oleic (a monounsaturated fat) cottonseed oils are being developed to contain desirable mixes of saturated and unsaturated fats that will be stable in food preparation (Liu etal., 2002).

Interesterification

• Interesterification is a chemical reaction that redistributes fatty acids on the glycerol backbone of a triglyceride molecule by blending fatty acids from more than one type of triglyceride.

• The rearrangement does not change the composition of any of the fatty acids from the starting materials, and because hydrogenation is not involved, trans fats do not form during this process

Interesterification• Unsaturated vegetable oils are blended with highly saturated

oils under specific conditions.

• New nonnatural combinations of triglycerides with specific melting profiles and functional attributes are formed that are intermediate in hardness between natural unsaturated oils and fully saturated oils.

• The interesterification approach using natural fatty acids as hardening ingredients is costly and might not outperform trans fats in its metabolic effects (Klonoff, 2007).

Fractionation and Blending• Fractionation involves separating oils into their different

components, which are characterized by different physical properties.

• Natural components of vegetable oils are low in trans fats and can be combined into various combinations. (Norlida et al., 1996)

• Each particular blended combination can be tailored to the requirements of a food in terms of required cooking and taste properties according to the overall characteristics of the blend(Babji et al., 1998)

• This fractionation approach is costly and involves much testing to create optimal combinations of natural ingredients.

Using a blend of vegetable oils

• Blending currently acceptable oil products into formulations that yield the benefits of partially hydrogenated oils shelf life, texture, and taste with fewer health risks.

• A manufacturer of fats used in baked goods and frying, now offers a trans fat free shortening made from a combination of sunflower, soy, and cottonseed oil. – The problem: Right now the cost of these blends is high,

which could mean higher prices in the supermarket aisle.– The solution: A portion of palm oil in that combination

would keep the prices remain the same in the supermarket aisle.

Butter and Animal Fat

• An option for replacing trans fats is a return to butter, lard, and tallow as fat additives because these substances are very low in trans fats.

• However, these substances are high in saturated fat and cholesterol and extremely atherogenic (Constant, 2004).

• This approach of using animal fats to create good-tasting foods is not viable because of their limited availablity and flexibility of their use.

Natural Unsaturated Oils• One of the alternatives to using saturated or partially

hydrogenated fats is the use of natural unsaturated liquid vegetable oils such as olive, canola, corn, or soy oils.

• This approach of utilizing unsaturated fats would lead to more rancidity and faster degradation due to heatingthan that of the natural saturated oils.

• Foods containing unsaturated oils would not have a long shelf life.

Fat Substitutes

• They are non-fatty substances, such as plant fiber or whole oats. In foods, these substances feel and taste like fat. (Prindiville et al., 2000)

• Another trans fat-free technology combines emulsifiers with unhydrogenated unsaturated oil to mimic the performance of shortening. (Marangoni et al., 2007)

• A microsaturation process that combines unsaturated oils with saturated medium chain triglycerides in a heated and agitated blender (US Patent 7,101,584)

• These fat substitutes are more expensive, limited availability, and unknown their safety status

Fat Substitutes

• In recent years, the non-triglyceride structuring of edible oils (i.e. oleogelation) has shown strong potential as a means to replace hard-stock fats in food products.

• A variety of different systems have been identified which can impart solid-like properties on edible oil (Wang et al., 2016).

Natural Saturated Oils

• While they are less harmful than fats high in trans fats, they are possibly still more conducive to heart disease than vegetable oils rich in mono- and polyunsaturated fats.

• Reports claiming and disputing a link between ingestion of natural saturated palm oils and heart disease have been published in recent years.

Saturated Fat - Reevaluated

The results of the present meta-analysis support the hypothesis that the available randomised controlled trials did not support the introduction of dietary fat recommendations in order to reduce CHD risk or related mortality (Harcombe et al., 2015)

Two recent publications have questioned the alleged relationship between saturated fat and CHD and called for dietary guidelines to be reconsidered (DiNicolantonio, 2014; Chowdhury et al., 2014).

Use of Natural Saturated Vegetable Oils

• Still another option is to reexamine the usefulness of saturated vegetable fats including the "tropicals" such as palm, palm kernel, and coconut oils.

• Tropical oils have a creamy consistency that can mimic the kind of chemistry found in saturated fats from animal sources.

• They can offer similar tastes and textures when used in packaged cookies and crackers.

• They have different position of most of the saturated fatty acids (Sn-1 and 3) as compared to those of animal fats (Sn-2).

Use of Natural Saturated Vegetable Oils

• Oil from the palm fruit is approximately 50% saturated fat; the rest is 40% monounsaturated and 10% polyunsaturated.

• In fact, some studies showed that the fat in palm oil (known as palmitic acid) may actually help lower blood cholesterol (Nestel et al. 1992, Sundram et al. 1997, Sundram et al. 2003, Sundram et al., 2007).

Use of Natural Saturated Vegetable Oils

• Contrary to popular mythology (encouraged by the medical establishment and regulators), tropical oils are not all saturated.

• Palm oil, for example, is composed of roughly equal amounts of mono-unsaturated and saturated fatty acids.

• Palm oil also contain other factors beneficial to health, such as tocopherols, tocotrienols, and carotenoids as natural anti-oxidants.

source: www.greenpalm.org

source: www.greenpalm.org

source: www.greenpalm.org

Top 10 palm oil consuming nations 2015

• 61 million tonnes of palm oil was consumed in 2015.

• The top 10 consuming nations accounted for 41.2 million tonnes, 68% (www.greenpalm.org)

Top 10 palm oil consuming nations 2015

Country Million tonnes Country Million tonnes

India 9.2 Pakistan 2.5

Indonesia 7.3 Nigeria 2.3

EU 28 7.2 Thailand 1.7

China 5.8 Bangladesh 1.3

Malaysia 2.9 USA 1

source: www.greenpalm.org

Recommendation1. Using animal saturated fats, but in much smaller

amounts, limited availability and flexibility.2. Inventing another man-made fat that tastes good

without ill health effects.3. Using saturated vegetable oils, including palm and

coconut oils.4. Using a blend of monounsaturated or polyunsaturated

and saturated vegetable oils or their fractions to get theshelflife, taste, and texture of trans fats.

THANK YOU