Fatty acid composition of Portuguese spreadable fats with emphasis on trans isomers

Abstract

The fatty acid composition of 17 brands of spreadable fats available in the Portuguese market was determined by capillary gas liquid chromatography as fatty acid methyl esters on a highly polar cyanopropylpolysiloxane liquid phase column. The total saturated fatty acids ranged from 23.9 to 52.6% with palmitic acid being 11.9–37.7% and stearic acid 4.0–12.3%. A wide range in the polyunsaturated fatty acids levels was noted (10.8–57.4%) with linoleic acid ranging from 10.6 to 54.0% and linolenic acid from 0.1 to 5.2%. Oleic acid levels ranged from 18.2 to 41.4%. Concerning total trans fatty acids, the mean level was 2.6%, ranging from 0.2 to 9.0%. The most frequent occurrence of trans fatty acids content in spreadable fats was in the 0.2–0.5% range (9 of the 17 brands were in this range) and only 1 brand contained trans fatty acids levels higher than 6.0%.