FUNCTIONALITY OF PALM OIL IN FOODS

The functional properties of commercial solid fats such as shortening and margarine are closely related to their fatty acid and triacylglycerol compositions. Plastic fats produced from hydrogenated seed oils may suffer from undesirable crystal structure changes during handling and storage. It has been demonstrated that this problem increases with increasing chain length uniformity of the component fatty acids. This is also evidenced by the carbon number composition of the high melting triacylglycerols of the plastic fats. Triacylglycerols with carbon numbers 48 and 54 promote β crystallization, those with carbon numbers 50 and 52 promote β' crystallization. Since palm oil and its products contain high levels of C50 and C52 triacylglycerols they are useful for improving the functional properties of plastic fats.