“Although palm oil is a single natural product that is semisolid at room temperature, it can be tailor-made to be a drop-in solution to replace almost any partially hydrogenated oil,” McNeill adds. “This is achieved through a physical process called fractionation. Melted palm oil is slowly cooled, causing large fat crystals to form. The crystals are filtered off, leaving liquid oil and a hard, waxy solid. These fractions can be blended back in different proportions to generate a range of products with different physical properties. The fractions themselves can be fractionated, creating even more unique components that can also be blended. We have developed more that 30 unique products that are drop-in solutions to almost every partially hydrogenated oil. All of these products are not hydrogenated and contain only a trace of trans fatty acids.”
Palm oil has a natural balance of unsaturated and saturated fat, containing about equal amounts of oleic acid and palmitic acid (40% and 45%, respectively). “Partially hydrogenated oils typically have a lower level of saturated fat because the difference is made up with a high level of trans fatty acids,” says McNeill. “The sum of the trans fatty acids and the saturated fatty acids in hydrogenated oil is usu-ally the same as, or greater than, the saturated-fat content in palm oil. Because trans fatty acids are much worse than saturates, a 1:1 substitute with palm oil is a healthier option.”
However, scientists at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service investigated whether palm oil is a good substitute for partially hydro-genated fat. A clinical trial was designed to compare the effect of four different oils, as they are commonly consumed, on heart-disease risk. Fifteen adults, both male and female, volunteered for the study. Their levels of LDL were moderately high at 130 mg per deciliter of blood or above, and all were age 50 years or older. They each consumed each of four 35-day experimental diets. The fats tested were: partially hydrogenated soybean oil (moderately high in trans fat), palm oil (high in saturated fat), canola oil (high in monounsaturated fat) and soybean oil (high in polyunsaturated fat).
The findings suggest that, when compared to consuming either of the diets enriched with canola and soybean oils, the diets enriched with palm oil or partially hydrogenated soybean oil resulted in similarly unfavorable levels of LDL cholesterol and apolipoprotein B (a protein, attached to fat particles, that carries bad cholesterol throughout the bloodstream). The results of this study, published in the April 2009 issue of Agricultural Research suggest that palm oil might not be the healthiest substitute for trans fatty acids.
This is just one study, but it further adds to the fatty-acid dilemma. In the end, it might be best to heed Radcliffe’s advice, notably that “it is still important to adhere to the recommended daily intake of saturated fat,” as well as the recommendation by the American Heart Association to avoid trans fat as much as possible.
Donna Berry, president of Chicago-based Dairy & Food Communications, Inc., a network of professionals in busi-ness-to-business technical and trade communications, has been writing about product development and marketing for 13 years. Prior to that, she worked for Kraft Foods in the natural-cheese division. She has a B.S. in food sci-ence from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. She can be reached at
donnaberry@dairy-food.com
.
Transition Away From Trans
According to “Getting rid of trans fats in the US diet: Policies, incentives and progress,” published in the Dec. 2008 Food Policy: “Many applications, such as fried fast foods, are rapidly finding substitutes for partially hydrogenated oils. Applications that are difficult to address, such as pastry, are currently the focus of research and development, and thus solutions are likely to appear within a relatively short period of time.
“It took decades for use of partially hydrogenated oils to expand throughout the food industry, but it seems likely that they will be removed from the food supply within only a few years,” say the authors.
The mandatory labeling of trans content on packaged foods and bans on its use in restaurants in ma-jor cities, such as New York, have spurred the move to healthier fats.
The report estimates that industry costs for testing, relabeling and reformulation is $139 and $275 million.
While the industry wants to move quickly, the report notes it’s hampered by a three-year lag neces-sary to meet the rapidly expanding demand for healthier oils. For example, in 2007, U.S. farmers planted approximately 1.5 million acres of low-linoleic soybeans, which translates to about 1 billion pounds of low linoleic-oleic oil. However, an estimated 3 billion pounds of partially hydrogenated oils is required just for foodservice applications.
―The Editors