Effect of randomization on oxidative stability of vegetable oils at two different temperatures

Abstract

Five vegetable oils were each randomized by chemical means (with the use of a sodium potassium alloy) and by enzymatic means (using a nonspecific lipase). The success of the randomization procedure was confirmed via positional analysis. The oxidative stabilities of the native and chemically randomized oils were determined at storage temperatures of 28°C and 55°C using absorbance at 234 nm as indicative of conjugated diene content. No difference between curves occurred in oils stored at 55°C, however, at the lower temperature all chemically randomized oils had significantly steeper slopes (P<0.05), suggesting a lower stability. When both enzymatically and chemically randomized oils were compared to native oils at 28°C, no significant difference occurred between slopes of native and enzymatically randomized oils, however, the end content of conjugated dienes was significantly higher for chemically randomized canola, corn and soybean oils (P<0.05). No difference was seen between the slopes of the three different oils from either linseed or sunflower. Since both of these oils exhibited higher oxidation rates, it is possible that observation of differences between the stability of native and chemically randomized oild is dependent upon the rate of the reaction.