Cocoa butter fatty acid content

The deodorization of cocoa butter is necessary to reduce free fatty acid content and to give a product that satisfies the present day requirement of a neutral bland flavor. Deodorization is a suitable method for partially eliminating chlorinated insecticides from cocoa butter. The normal deodorization temperatures are in the range 160-180°C. The oxidative stability of various cocoa butters listed in Table 4 shows extremely high values, and these are unaffected during the deodorization process. Stability against oxidation depends on natural antioxidants present in cocoa butters. The tocopherol composition in Table 5 shows a predominance of... 

Although, in general, fats come from animal sources and oils come from vegetable sources, this is not always so. For example, fish oils are high in unsaturated fatty acids. The unsaturated fatty acid contents of sardine oil and cod-liver oil are 77% and 84%, respectively. Likewise, not all fats come from animal sources. Cocoa butter (see opening photo), with a fatty acid composition of 24% palmitic acid and 35% stearic acid, is a solid at room temperature. 

Fatty acid determination has not often been applied to cocoa butter authenticity in isolation. Wong Soon (1991) showed the addition of illipe to cocoa butter in a model system by measuring the fatty acid composition of mixtures but the change in composition did not reflect the level of addition of illipe. Lipp el al. (2001) found differences in the 08 2 content between South American, African and Asian butters. However, determination of fatty acid profiles should be regarded as an important factor to consider, particularly as part of multivariate analytical schemes. 

The advent of relatively inexpensive computers has enabled the accumulation and rapid analysis of large sets of data. By this means patterns and trends not always apparent from visual inspection of chromatograms or tables of data can be discriminated by being sorted into recognizable patterns. This approach is essential for some techniques such as pyrolysis where the quantity of data produced would otherwise be overwhelming. Several statistical approaches to exploit the information content of fatty acid and triacylglycerol patterns for the detection and quantification of CBEs in cocoa butter have been reported (Lipp et al., 2001 Simoneau et al., 1999). 

The best conditions were found at 480 bar and 100°C. A residual butter content below one per cent can be reached in 1,5 hours. The extraction temperature is limited at about 100°C. At higher temperature the content of free fatty acids increases, because it seems that a part of the triglycerides is splitted to fatty acids. The aroma losses are low and the defatted cocoa powder is of high quality. 

Today palm oil is widely used in food applicahons and preferred for frying and baking applications because of its good oxidative stability and high solid fat content. Palm oil contains about 50% saturated (42 8% palmitic and 4-5% stearic acids) and 50% unsaturated fatty acids (37-41% linoleic and 9-11% linolenic acids). The fatty acid composition of palm kernel oil resembles that of the coconut oil rather than that of palm oil. Palm kernel oil is rich in lauric (about 48%), myristic (16%) and oleic (15%) acids. Both palm oil and pahn kernel oil are commercially separated into stearin (solid) and olein (liquid) fractions for special applications. The stearin fraction obtained from palm kernel can be used as a cocoa butter substitute. The olein fraction is used in baked goods and soap manufacturing. Imitation palm-oil-based cheese, hand and body lotion, fatty acid methyl esters for use as fuel or solvent, and epoxidized pahn oil to produce plasticizers and stabilizers for conventional polyvinyl chloride plastics are some of the other products that are produced from palm oil (Basiron, 2005). 

---