Physico-chemical characterization of individual shortenings produced in
Iran in relation to their applications
Abstract
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.