An international research team headed by a University of Guelph professor has developed a heart healthy alternative to artery-clogging trans fats.
Trans fats are found in vegetable oil shortenings that have been fully or partially hydrogenated, a chemical process that restructures liquid oils to turn them solid, giving them the consistency of butter or lard.
Recent research has shown that hydrogenated oils are heavy in trans fat, which may be even more hazardous to our health than saturated fats. They've been shown to raise our bad cholesterol levels while lowering our good cholesterol and putting us at risk for heart disease.
A federal task force last summer recommended limiting the use of these fats in processed foods, and many manufacturers have been scrambling to change their recipes to eliminate or reduce the trans fats in their products.
Now, a team led by Alejandro Marangoni, a professor at the Univeristy of Guelph's Department of Food Science, has found an alternative way of turning heart-healthy oils into a solid that doesn't create trans fat.
Marangoni's research group devised a method to mix vegetable oil, water, monoglycerides and fatty acids to form a gel that has the same structural and functional properties as trans and saturated fats.
"So this is no different than your olive oil, your soybean oil, your canola oil -- but it's now in a solid form," Marangoni explained to Canada AM. "And it has been done without having to add any trans fats or any saturated fats to the product.
"It's a completely different kind of chemistry."
As an added bonus, the new oil formula has been found to release fats in a more controlled way.
By regulating the amount of insulin produced by the body after a meal, controlled release of lipids in the blood may help lower the risk of obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
The research, which included human trials, will be published in the next issue of Soft Matter, a journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Hydrogenated fats were welcomed by the food industry when they were invented early in the 20th century because they don't require refrigeration like butter did, they extend the shelf-life of foods and keep baked products moist.
Marangoni says his new fat has all the same benefits. He hopes the product will be available for use for industrial food manufacturers later this year.
"Because this is a recently patented technology that has just become public, we can actually see this in our products this year."
"So really, the bakery applications, the sort of food service sector, that's where this is targeted to," he says. "That's where we get most of our fat. So that's where we hope to see it this year."
