EPOC 2016, 5-6 October, Warsaw, Poland

Solutions to Trans Fatty

Acids Replacemet
Department of Food and Agricultural Product
Technology, Faculty of Agricultural Technology,
Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta 55281,
Indonesia
 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
Trans fat : structure and function relationship

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
 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 heating
than 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
 Recommendation
1. 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 the
shelflife, taste, and texture of trans fats.
THANK YOU