Effect of pan-frying in different culinary fats on the fatty acid profile of pork

Abstract

This study was set up to determine how pan-frying either without culinary fat or with different culinary fats (polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA)-enriched culinary fat, olive oil and margarine) affects the fatty acid (FA) composition of pork. The meat samples ( longissimus thoracis (LT)) originated from pigs fed different dietary fat sources (animal fat, soybean oil or linseed oil) and thus had different FA compositions before frying. Pan-frying resulted in considerable increases in the meat total-FA content, although this was not always significant and highly variable, despite standardisation of the frying process. The FA composition of the pan-fried meat tended to become similar to that of the culinary fat used, and the extent of changes in the content of a particular FA was relative to the FA gradient from the culinary fat to the meat. However, this was also dependent on the culinary fat used, since frying in olive oil appeared to affect the FA composition of the meat more than did frying in the other culinary fats. Differences in FA composition of meat resulting from different animal feeding treatments remained unchanged after pan-frying without fat, they became smaller after frying in margarine and PUFA-enriched culinary fat, whereas frying in olive oil largely masked the initial FA profile differences. Long chain PUFA (LCPUFA) in the meat were not significantly lost by the frying process, but their proportion was influenced by the uptake of the culinary fat.