Comparative study of walnut and Camelina sativa oil as a functional components for the unsaturated fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid enrichment of kefir

Abstract

There is a serious need to develop and test new functional foods with the addition of unsaturated fatty acids due to their insufficient intake from frequently consumed foods. Therefore, the aim of this work was to determine how the addition of cold pressed walnut and Camelina sativa oil and storage time affects the composition and quality properties of kefir. The impact of these factors and the ability of the used microorganisms to synthesize conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and other fatty acids were also determined. The vegetable oil addition to the kefir did not affect the number of all the determined groups of microorganisms and texture parameters. Using the walnut oil turned out to be more advantageous than camelina, mainly due to the sensoral properties. The microflora of kefir grains did not increase the CLA content. However, during the fermentation process a beneficial increase of some fatty acids content was observed. These research findings revealed that especially walnut oil could be used to develop fermented milk products as functional foods, enriched with n-3 and n-6 fatty acids.