Shortenings are highly important in the food industry for being used widely in baking, confectionery, and frying products. Conventionally, shortenings are among the most important sources of trans fatty acids(TFA). In order to characterize these products, the samples from 15 different brands in Iran were collected and their physicochemical properties (fatty acid composition, iodine value(IV), free fatty acids(FFA) content, peroxide value(PV), induction periods of oxidation at 110°C(IP110), slip melting point(SMP), solid fat content(SFC), and Lovibond color) were studied. Briefly, Iranian shortenings contain 0.21-15.54% of TFA and 40.08-59.54% saturated fatty acids(SFA). Palmitic acid(25.48-47.90 %) was the dominant SFA in shortenings. The IV between 40.84 and 73.32, FFA content between 0.02-0.92% and PV between 1.0 and 3.0 mEq/kg were detected in samples. The IP110 of the samples was found to be between 10.03 and 44.02 h. The Lovibond yellow and red colors of the samples were 2.1-13.6 and 28-70.4, respectively. SMP of the shortenings was between 42.5 and 49.3 °C (45.53 °C on average). The SFC of Iranian shortenings were found to be between 40.6 and 75.0% at 10 °C, 24.2-59.5% at 20°C, 11.4-36.4% at 30°C, 7.8-27.3% at 35°C, and between 3.1 and 17.4% at 40°C. The results of this study can present valuable information on various types of shortenings to researchers and producers as the physicochemical properties of middle-eastern shortenings were characterized in great detail and were also compared with their international counterparts with reasons causing these differences in relation to slight changes in their components.
