Healthy Fats and Essential Oils are Superior

Excerpted from Food Processing:

...There’s an ongoing debate in the nutrition world about the merits and dangers of saturated fat. Traditionally, they've been shunned, and many health organizations maintain that eating saturated fat from any source increases the risk of heart disease and stroke. Recently, other nutrition experts argue they contribute to weight control and overall health.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia found saturated fats – in butter, other whole-milk dairy products, palm and coconut oils and fatty meats -- are protective in inflammatory diseases such as colitis, Crohn’s disease, and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

"Saturated fats aren’t toxic; they actually have the ability to promote healing," says lead researcher Deanna Gibson. She also notes that people with gut issues and those already on a restricted diet might be nutritionally deprived and therefore should not avoid fats. Fats are essential for the body, she says, and are important for tasks such as hormone production and brain function.

"Improved" fats and oils got some of the spotlight at the July Institute of Food Technologists' IFT Food Expo. Bunge North America (bungenorthamerica.com) has been on a mission to find non-GMO sources for many of its products, and non-GMO canola and soybean oils were introduced under Bunge's Whole Harvest brand.

TerraVia (www.terravia.com), which mines algae for a number of products, showed AlgaWise algae oil with omega-9s. The company's new Thrive culinary algae cooking oil has 75 percent less saturated fat than olive oil.

AAK USA (www.aak.com), formerly AarhusKarlshamn, incorporated Cisao 7831 non-hydrogenated flakes into a savory flatbread to improve flakiness. EsSence 86-43, a non-hydrogenated/no trans solution with a low satured fat profile delivered a moist, soft texture in lavender cupcakes. Illexao CB 58, a cocoa butter equivalent, contributed the same physical properties and triglyceride composition as cocoa butter in cookies.

Like the sunflower folks, soybean crops are tilting toward high-oleic seeds from both DuPont and Monsanto, and their resulting oils are ready for the market, reports Qualisoy (www.qualisoy.com).