Author
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Taylor, Scott |
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King, Jerry |
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Submitted to: Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Publication Acceptance Date: 3/31/2000 Publication Date: N/A Citation: N/A Interpretive Summary: The American consumer has become increasingly aware of the effect of the nutritional content in foods they consume on their overall health. Nutritional supplements, functional foods, and nutraceutical ingredients are becoming highly desired by the public as important agents, in addition to conventional medical care, for maintaining a healthy life style. Specific vegetable-derived oils are key ingredients in the above food regime, and provide specific minor chemicals that assist the individual in maintaining their health. The results of this research offer a route to enhancing chemicals called phytosterols, which can lower cholesterol in humans, from oils such as soybean and corn. In particular, a processing technique using only compressed carbon dioxide and ethanol, which are generally regarded as safe (GRAS) agents, allows the enrichment of these phytosterols from vegetable oils, allowing the derived extracts to be safely reformulated back into a variety of functional foods. Besides this benefit, the described processing technique is compatible with the environment, reducing solvent emissions into the air and water, unlike some conventionally-used processing methods. Technical Abstract: Recent research has revealed that by-products of corn milling processes contain valuable phytonutrients having cholesterol-lowering properties. Corn bran, and in particular, corn fibre, contain ferulate phytosterol esters that have been documented to reduce cholesterol in humans. Extraction technologies, including supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), are only capable of isolating corn bran or fibre oil with the phytosterol esters along with other lipophilic ingredients (e.g., triglycerides). In this study, a two-step isolation and fractionation process was investigated for obtaining phytosterol esters, enriched with respect to the nutraceutical component in corn fibre oil which contains a higher proportion of the desired ferulate esters. This was accomplished by first selectively extracting the oil from the fibre matrix using supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) followed by supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC). Using fraction collection during the SFC stage, an extract fractio containing 53% by weight of ferulate esters could be obtained. This represents an enrichment factor of 18.4 relative to the same result obtained using corn bran oil. In addition, excellent mass balances for the respective extract components were maintained during the tandem SFE-SFC process. The resultant extract has been processed using only GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe) ingredients (carbon dioxide, ethanol) and hence is safe for direct incorporation into foodstuffs as a nutraceutical component. |
