Stabilization of specialty oils with tocopherols and phospholipids

Abrehem Abad
PhD Student
Department of Biochemistry


Date: September 18, 2023
Time: 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. 
Room: ED 2018B

Lipid oxidation is a major cause of quality deterioration of edible oils especially the highly unsaturated ones. The oxidation of oils occurs primarily via autoxidation and photooxidation. Therefore, to control oxidative processes of edible oils, use of specific compounds is required. This is of paramount importance to consumers, academia, and the industry.  Furthermore, as synthetic antioxidants are falling out of favor, use of natural antioxidants is of interest to satisfy the “clean label” criterion demanded by the consumers. The edible oils are primarily composed of triacylglycerols (TAG), but some may contain a substantial proportion of phospholipids (PL) such as krill oil.  The research intends to use selected phospholipids with or without the use of mixed tocopherols as well as α-tocopherol. While alpha-tocopherol is often used, the efficacy of gamma-tocopherol is superior in stabilizing food lipids.  Mixed tocopherols are a by-product of edible oil processing and these are dominated by gamma-tocopherol. In this study, we found that phospholipid 1 (PL-1) had more effect alone with stripped oil compared with phospholipid 2 (PL-2) alone with oil. Nevertheless, PL-2 had more impact on the stability of the oils with α-tocopherol and/or mixed-tocopherols. For PL-2 with mixed-tocopherols (350 ppm) had the highest synergistic activity than PL-2 with mixed-tocopherol (500 ppm). The results demonstrates synergism between PL and mixed tocopherols that would provide effective protection to highly unsaturated edible oils.