Why can’t chemists/food technologists use some chemical or physical process to remove the saturated fatty acids from cooking oil ?
For example, according to Wikipedia, canola oil has 7.4% saturated fats. If we could remove those fats we would have a very good cooking oil with only healthy monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.
So, why is it not possible to do this ?
Comments
Usually its very hard to remove bad stuff without also removing lot of good stuff as well.
Often its also expensive and not worth doing
I also suspect its more complicated than “saturated fat bad for you”, lot of ideas about what is healthy have changed so much.
It’s mostly because fatty acids are all mixed together in triglycerides, like a tangled-up bunch of necklaces. You can’t just “pull out” the saturated ones easily without breaking everything apart first. Chemically separating them would be complicated, expensive, and could mess with the oil’s stability and taste. Plus, some saturation is actually useful for shelf life and cooking performance.
Saturated fats are part of the oil’s basic structure, so it’s hard to remove them without changing the oil’s texture and taste. Separating them out isn’t easy because it would mess with the oil’s overall makeup.
Because the difference between the two molecules is pretty small. Unsaturated means that at least on if the carbon-carbon bonds in the fatty acid chain (which van be pretty long chains of carbon-carbon bonds with hydrogen to the side) is a double bond instead of a single bond, so not saturated with Hydrogen bonds. That’s it. The chemical properties of the two fats are nearly identical.
They could. But you couldn’t afford it afterwards. Oil is just squished plants. That’s why it is affordable at all.
Fatty acid molecules typically stick together with glycerin in something called a triglyceride molecule. These can bind to both saturated and unsaturated fatty acid molecules, so you need something to do this on a molecular level.
The easiest way to change this is probably to use temperature, as the different fatty acids have different freeze points. However, when you’ve removed the unsaturated fats from for example butter, you will need to recombine the desired fats into butter again – but they behave differently, and now it’s no longer possible to make butter from them.
Adding to that, the body needs some amount of saturated fats for its internal processes, so you shouldn’t get rid of it completely.
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As for the fats themselves, it’s not as simple as “saturated = bad” and “unsaturated = good”. Our bodies use most kinds for various purposes. An overconsumption of fatty acids is linked to high LDL cholesterol, which in turn is linked to heart disease. The recommendation is no more than that 5-6% of our daily calorie intake come from saturated fats
The research on fatty acids has come under review recently, and the evidence is far from conclusive. Older research on the area is inconsistent and more research is needed to understand the link. This does not mean eating saturated fats is suddenly deemed as healthy as unsaturated fats – scientists still believe there is a link, it’s just that more data is needed to prove it. Numerous studies has linked LDL (“bad” cholesterol) and ApoB (Apolipoprotein B) with heart disease, and you’d be a fool to disregard the research completely.
The lack of conclusive evidence doesn’t mean something is not dangerous. It means we should be cautious with it while we use it, and do more research to learn more.