Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture
Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences
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Food scientists enhance soy oil health benefits
By Fred Miller Andrew Proctor, professor of food science, and graduate student Vishal Jain have juggled the molecular structure of soil oil to produce a cooking oil with significant health benefits. The converted oil is rich in conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). Studies show it gives the immune system a boost to reduce the risks of cancer and diabetes and that humans eating diets rich in CLA have reduced body fat and waist size, Proctor said. Proctor and Jain have received a $275,000 USDA grant to build a pilot plant that will process a greater volume of oil in less time to demonstrate the commercial feasibility of the process. Proctor and Jain have used the converted oil to produce potato chips that contain high concentrations of CLA. Proctor calls them “healthier potato chips.” “It is still important to have a low fat diet and we do not propose increasing the fat intake, but a few chips will provide needed CLA,” Proctor said. “Our goal is to show how a popular food item can offer high concentrations of CLA without increasing saturated fat intake,” Proctor said. “Potato chips suit this purpose well. Subsequent studies may include development of high-CLA salad oils and dressings.” Proctor said their process uses only refined soy oil, which does not introduce the health risks associated with hydrogenated oils. CLA occurs naturally in beef and dairy products, but at such low levels that no benefit is obtained in a normal, healthy diet, Proctor said. In an earlier experiment, Proctor found that CLA could be synthesized in soy oil by irradiating it with ultraviolet and visible light, although that first process still produced only low amounts, similar to that present in beef and dairy. Proctor and Jain experimented with an instrument that exposes oil to UV light more evenly and produces significantly higher CLA content in soybean oil. The photo-irradiated oil contains 25 percent CLA, Proctor said. Beef and dairy products contain less than 1 percent. Jain adds iodine as a catalyst to destabilize double bonds that connect the carbon atoms in the oil. Proctor said energy from the photo irradiation causes those double bonds to shift position, a chemical change that results in the formation of CLA. Later, the iodine is filtered out of the product. “Changing the position of the double bonds makes all the difference in the world,” Proctor said. Proctor said other graduate students are working on related projects, looking for other ways to take advantage of the photo irradiation process. |
