Tropical vegetable fats and butters: properties and new alternatives

Abstract

Tropical fats and butters are characterized by their high contents of saturated fatty acids, which confer to them melting points and rheological properties adequate for the production of high valuable food commodities. We can distinguish 3 groups of tropical fats: those having medium chain fatty acids, like coconut or palm kernel oils, those rich in palmitic acid, like palm oil and its fractions, and those rich in stearic acid like cocoa butter. Modern biotechnology has provided with alternatives to these species in engineered common oil crops enriched in saturated fatty acids and processes aimed to enrich common oils in disaturated TAGs by enzymatic transesterification. The present and future of these new sources of saturated fats are discussed in this work.