Cocoa fatty acid composition

There are physical—chemical differences between fats of the same fatty acid composition, depending on the placement of the fatty acids. For example, cocoa butter and mutton tallow share the same fatty acid composition, but fatty acid placement on the glycerin backbone yields products of very different physical properties. 

Table 14. Fatty Acid Composition of Raw Cocoa Beans and Cocoa Butter ...

U.N. packaging codes for, 18 12t Bahia cocoa beans composition, 6 369t fatty acid composition, 6 371t minerals content, 6 371t tocopherols, 6 370t... 

Stearic acid is a long chain SFA present, to varying degrees, in virtually all edible fats and oils. Table IV provides the fatty acid composition of fats and oils commonly consumed by humans. The most abundant food sources of stearic acid in the American diet are beef fat and cocoa butter (chocolate). Cocoa butter is valued by chocolate manufacturers because it remains solid at room temperature but dissolves quickly at body temperature, a unique characteristic of chocolate that is due largely to stearic acid. During the last few decades as cocoa butter prices and supplies have fluctuated, food companies began looking for alternative oils that could provide equivalent amounts of stearic acid in order to retain the desirable physical characteristics. Several... 

Little information has been published on the climatic and geographical factors affecting the composition of CBA fats. It can be assumed, however, that components which vary in cocoa butter with location, etc., also change in other confectionery fats, although these effects are nullified somewhat by refining and fractionation. Comprehensive details of the acylglycerol and fatty acid composition of illipe butters from several Shorea species are presented with description of cultivation and harvesting in Blicher-Mathiesen (1994) and some details of the cultivation and uses of shea have been described by Ruiz Mendez and Huesa Lope (1991). 

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. 

Neri, A., Simonetti, M.S., Cossignani, L. and Damiani, P. (1998) Identification of cocoabutter equivalents added to cocoa butter-I. An approach by fatty acid composition of the triacylglycerol sub-fractions separated by Ag+-HPLC. Z. Lebensm. Unters. Forsch. A., 206(6), 387-392. 

Identification Cocoa Butter Substitute exhibits the following typical composition profile of fatty acids determined as directed under Fatty Acid Composition, Appendix VII ... 

The above list does not include cocoa butter nor minor oils such as rice bran oil or safflower oil. Nor does it distinguish between oils from a common botanical source with a modified fatty acid composition, such as canola oil and high-erucic rape seed oil, linseed oil and linola, or the various types of sunflower oil. 

Shea (Butyrospermum parkii, shea butter, karite butter). This fat comes from trees grown mainly in West Africa and contains an unusually high level of unsapo-nifiable material ( 11%), including polyisoprene hydrocarbons. It is rich in stearic acid, but its fatty acid composition varies with its geographical source. It contains palmitic (4—8%), stearic (23-58%), oleic (33-68%), and hnoleic acid (4—8%). It can be fractionated to give a stearin (POP 1%, POSt 8%, and StOSt 68%), which can be used as a cocoa butter equivalent (79, 122-124). It is one of the six permitted fats (palm oil, iUipe butter, kokum butter, sal fat, shea butter, and mango kernel fat), which, in some countries at least, can partially replace cocoa butter in chocolate (86). 

The fatty acid composition, various analytical constants, and triacylglycerol composition of different cocoa butters are presented in Tables 1-3, respectively. These results show that Malaysian cocoa butter contains the highest levels of mono-unsaturated triacylglycerols. The Brazihan cocoa butter contains the lowest levels of monounsaturated triacylglycerols and the highest levels of other unsaturated triacylglycerols. The cocoa butters from India and Sri Lanka are close to Malaysian cocoa butter in terms of hardness and triacylglycerol composition. 

TABLE 1. Fatty Acid Composition of various Cocoa Butters by GLC (wt%). 

Table 9.1.5 Fatty acid composition of cocoa butter in %.

PUFAs is increased. The C22 PUFAs were only those derived from the lino-lenic acid family (n-3). The influence of dietary saturated fatty acids on the relative concentration of saturates in these two major phospholipids was generally not apparent from the results from various laboratories. In a recent study, however, in which the addition of saturated fatty acids (in the form of cocoa butter) was controlled, it became evident that the addition of saturated fatty acids in the diet significantly increased the level of saturates in both PC (Table XIX) and PE (Table XV) (Kramer et a/., 1982). For detailed fatty acid composition of the dietary oils see Table XXX in Chapter 17. 

Table 3.22 Variation in the fatty acid composition of cocoa butter (Fincke, 1976) (mol %)...

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. 

Availability of 1,3-specific lipases capable of modifying the 1,3 fatty acid composition of oils via interesterification has made it possible to produce cocoa butter-like products resembling cocoa butter in both composition and functional characteristics. Butter substitutes produced by this approach are granted GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status (Anon, 1988). 

Cocoa Butter, NF Fatty acid composition Organic volatile impurities. Method rV < 467 > C 0.25... 

Fat pressed from the roasted cacao bean (cocoa bean) is known as cocoa butter. It is yellow and possesses a slight chocolate flavor. It consists primarily of triglycerides (three fatty acids bonded to glycerol) of the fatty acids palmitic, stearic, and oleic acids. This fatty acid composition causes cocoa butter to be solid at room temperature but to melt at near body temperature. Most of the cocoa butter is used in the manufacture of chocolate. 

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). 

There are a number of minor oils, all of high value, most of which are marketed mainly either for medical purposes or for their flavour. Olive, evening primrose, borage, fish oils and cocoa butter are described elsewhere. Others include hazelnut, walnut, macadamia, almond, apricot, pumpkin, poppy-seed and rice bran oils. The process of testing for authenticity of these oils should be approached in the same way as for the bulk oils above, i.e. fatty acid profile, sterols, tocopherols and triglyceride composition. However, there is little generally available published material on the ranges of values to be expected... 

The composition and properties of cocoa butter have been summarized (Chalseri and Dimick, 1987) and extensive details of the composition of cocoa butter and CBA fats have been compiled (Wong Soon, 1991 Lipp and Anklam, 1998a Lipp et al., 2001). There are serious problems to be considered when applying sets of historical and some contemporary data to the determination of fat authenticity, particularly where this involves the widely used sterol, triacyl-glycerol and fatty acid data. Improvements in the resolution of chromatography... 

The complexity of chocolate manufacture arises from the polymorphic nature of its constituent fats, which can come in at least five crystal forms, each with an individual melting point. Cocoa butter is chemically a multicomponent mixture of triglycerides and trace compounds (Davis and Dimick 1986). Approximately 85% of the composition consists of just three triglycerides POP ( 20%), POS ( 40%) and SOS ( 25%), where palmitic (P), oleic (O) and stearic (S) are the fatty acids attached to the glycerol base. The precise composition depends on factors such as growing conditions and therefore can vary between batches, especially from different geographic regions (Chaiseri and Dimick 1989). 

---