Glycerol-Based Process Contaminants in Palm Oil

Authors : Tuğba Özdal, Öznur Yildar, Perihan Yolci Ömeroğlu

Pages : 16-21

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Publication Date : 2017-08-30

Article Type : Review

Abstract :Palm oil is one of the common used vegetable oil in food industry throughout the the world. This tropical palm fruit is reddish in color because of rich beta-carotene content. There are two types of palm oils that can be produced from the palm fruit. First type is palm oil, and it is produced from the pulp of the palm fruit. Second type is palm kernel oil and it is produced from the kernel part of the fruit. Palm oil exposed to high temperatures may have changes in its lipid matrix which leads to the formation of 3-monochloropropane-1,2-diol (3-MCPD) esters, additionally 2-monochloropropane-1,3-diol (2-MCPD) and glycidyl fatty acid esters. According to International Agency for Research on Cancer, 3-MCPD is a substances that have a possibility to cause cancer. European Food Safety Authority also has evaluated the risks of those substances for public health recently and stated that those substances are especially formed during the refining process of vegetable oils at high temperatures such as 200°C. There are two methods using for determining the esters of palm oil. First one is direct method based on LC-MS/MS which offers higher specificity and very low LOD/LOQ for each single 3-MCPD fatty acid esters, on the other hand it requires all set of standard materials for determination. The second method is indirect method including hydrolysis and derivatization of the analyte and determination step with  GC-MS. In the scope of this study, 3- and 2- MCPD, their fatty acid esters, and glycidyl fatty acid esters occurrence during processes of palm oil, its regulation, its adverse effects on human health, and analytical methods for determining those type of esters are reviewed.
Keywords : Palm oil, Glycerol-based process contaminants, Analytical methods, Regulation, Health effects