Projet

It is widely known that there is an urgent need to improve the nutritional profile of manufactured convenience foods. Our society is suffering an epidemic of metabolic syndrome, a group of metabolic disorders directly linked to our unhealthy lifestyles, which have lead to a dramatic increase in obesity, cardiovascular disease and type II diabetes. Recently, much attention has been focused on the removal of partially hydrogenated fats (PHF) from our diet. PHF can contain high levels of trans fatty acids which negatively affect our cholesterol (lipoprotein) metabolism. Food products today must report, by law, their trans fatty acid content in the nutritional panel. This has lead to a large consumer backlash against trans fat containing foods, which include the total ban on trans fats in New York and California. Many food manufacturers have therefore attempted to replace PHF with large amounts of saturated fats, particularly from palm oil. This is not a solution to the problem since consumption of excessive amounts of palmitic saturated fats can lead to an increase in serum bad cholesterol and is highly correlated to arterial plaque formation, liver damage and death. Thus, it is imperative to remove trans fats from our diet without excessively increasing saturated levels.
One of the highest sources of trans and saturated fats are laminated bakery products. An industry partner is interested in using mixtures of fully hydrogenated soybean oil (FHSO) in liquid soybean oil as a new laminating shortening. FHSO does not contain trans fatty acids and is derived from a locally-grown crop (soybeans). The problem with this strategy, however, is the apparent inability of a traditional fat crystal network of FHSO to trap liquid oil effectively and have the desired rheological properties for lamination. It is the purpose of this project to understand the influence of the different levels of structure on both oil binding capacity (OBC) and rheological properties. The team expects to understand the structural basis for oil binding in nanocrystalline fat networks and to maximize both OBC and mechanical strength using low levels of FHSO.