Organogel as a replacement of saturated fat in food products

Authors: Hwang, Hong-Sik

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/10/2016
Publication Date: 8/13/2016
Citation: Hwang, H.-S. 2016. Organogel as a replacement of saturated fat in food products [abstract]. U.S.-Korea Conference.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Organogels of edible oil have drawn a great interest as promising alternatives to saturated fats and trans fats. Plant waxes are recognized as promising organogelators, which can provide organogels from healthful vegetable oils at low concentrations. Plant waxes are obtained as by-products during the oil refining process of vegetable oils and can show health benefits such as the cholesterol level lowering effect and the controlled release of lipids into blood. Many plant waxes were evaluated for their gelation abilities towards vegetable oils. A few selected plant waxes showing a good gelation ability were chosen to be incorporated in a margarine formulation to investigate the feasibility of this technology in margarine and spread products. Sunflower wax showed the most promising results. In the second part of this presentation, properties of cookies made with natural wax-vegetable oil organogels will be discussed. For this, four different waxes including sunflower wax, rice bran wax, beeswax, and candelilla wax and three vegetable oils including olive oil, flaxseed oil and soybean oil were evaluated. Properties of dough prepared from these organogels such as hardness and melting behavior were affected by types of wax and vegetable oil. However, when cookies were prepared, it was found that cookie properties such as hardness, spread factor and fracturability were not significantly affected by types of wax and vegetable oil. Therefore, this study showed that wax-vegetable oil organogels are very promising alternatives to conventional fats. Lastly, morphology and networks of sunflower wax crystals in organogel will be discussed. Morphology of crystals was investigated with polarized light microscopy, phase contrast microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The exceptionally strong gelation ability of sunflower wax could be explained by networks of numerous plate-like crystals to immobilize vegetable oil.