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Hold the Trans Fats
New way to make processed foods without artery-clogging trans fats may help reduce heart disease, obesity, diabetes
BY ANDREW VOWLES
A heart-healthy recipe for making trans fat-free processed foods may result from work by an international research team headed by a Guelph food scientist.
By finding a new way to package oils and change them into a solid fat-like material, the researchers have developed an alternative to artery-clogging trans fats that may also help fend off obesity and diabetes, says Prof. Alejandro Marangoni, Food Science.
Their paper is currently online in Soft Matter, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Trans fats from partially hydrogenated oils are used to lengthen the shelf life of processed foods and as shortening in many industrial food products. But by altering the mix of so-called good and bad cholesterol in the blood, they may increase the risk of heart disease.
In December, New York City banned the use of trans fats from all restaurants. In Canada, a federal task force last summer recommended limits on the use of these fats in processed foods.
Marangoni's group has found a way to mix oil, water, monoglycerides and fatty acids to provide the same structural and functional benefits as trans fats.
More than that, he says their 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.
Referring to methods used by pharmaceutical companies to regulate the release of drugs into the body, Marangoni says: “People talk about controlled release in prescription drugs. We're talking about controlled release of food components.”
He's working with investigators at the University of Waterloo and in France, where he recently spent a nearly year-long research leave. In 2004, the group received a four-year grant from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.
Finding the correct formula to convert mixtures of oil, water, monoglycerides and fatty acids into a gel turned out to be relatively straightforward, says Marangoni. The key challenge was to change oil, which is liquid at room temperature, to fat, which is solid at room temperature.
“We were lucky,” he says, recalling how the team came up with a substance that showed most of the desired structural properties. Since then, they've been refining their work in the lab. They hope to interest product development researchers in helping to validate their results with actual food studies.
Because of its high melting point, the gel doesn't need refrigeration, but the same property makes it a poor alternative for spreading on cooked vegetables or breads, says Marangoni. It will, however, be a good alternative for the baking industry as it works to eliminate trans fats from products, he says.
In his informal home baking tests, he's used the gel to make breads and muffins. So far, though, only saturated fats can yield such specialty items as croissants and baklava. But he says there's still plenty of room for innovation in Canada's baking industry, worth about $3.2 billion a year, according to the Baking Association of Canada.