Food or edible material: processes – compositions – and products – Products per se – or processes of preparing or treating... – Fat or oil is basic ingredient other than butter in emulsion...
Reexamination Certificate
1999-09-10
2001-08-21
Paden, Carolyn (Department: 1761)
Food or edible material: processes, compositions, and products
Products per se, or processes of preparing or treating...
Fat or oil is basic ingredient other than butter in emulsion...
C426S603000, C426S606000, C426S607000, C554S227000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06277432
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to reduced calorie edible plastic fat compositions based on mixtures of triglycerides bearing various combinations of short (C
2
to C
4
) and long (C
16
to C
22
) chain fatty acid residues, and the use of such compositions in edible compositions such as shortenings and margarines. More particularly, the reduced calorie plastic fat compositions of the present invention are based on such triglyceride mixtures wherein a portion of the long chain fatty acid residues contain monounsaturation, and wherein the plastic fat composition contains substantially no added conventional triglyceride plasticizers such as low-melting oils or high-melting fats.
2. Description of Related Art
Dietary fat is the most concentrated source of energy of all the nutrients, supplying nine (9) kcal/gram, about double that contributed by either carbohydrate or protein. The amount of fat in the American diet has increased in the last 60 years by about 25% (Mead, J., et al. Lipids, Plenum, N.Y., 1986, page 459), so that fats now provide approximately 40% (or more) of the daily caloric intake.
Fat contributes to the palatability and flavor of food, since most food flavors are fat-soluble, and to the satiety value, since fatty foods remain in the stomach for longer periods of time than do foods containing protein and carbohydrate. Furthermore, fat is a carrier of the fat-soluble vitamins, A, D, E, and K, and the essential fatty acids, which have been shown to be important in growth and in the maintenance of many body functions. Hence, major research efforts have focused on ways to produce food substances that provide the same functional and organoleptic properties as fats, but not the calories. Synthetic fats have been created and are now undergoing testing for safety. Unfortunately, many consumers are concerned with the synthetic connotation of food additives of this type and will not avail themselves of the advantage they offer. There is, consequently, a need for a fat which is low in calories and high in functionality but is not perceived as artificial.
The most abundant group of fats is triglycerides—esters of fatty acids with glycerol (1,2,3-propanetriol). Natural fats have a broad range of functionalities and are handled in different ways by the human digestive process.
Early studies reported that triglyceride fats having high melting points were less digestible (Deuel, H. J., The lipids, vol. II, Interscience Publishers, 1955, pages 218 to 220). Later investigators questioned the relationship between digestibility and melting points, and scrutinized instead the chain lengths and degree of unsaturation of fatty acid substituents. Straight chain, saturated fatty acids having 4 up to 10 carbon atoms were completely digested by rats, those having 10 to 18 carbons progressively less digested, and those having 18 or higher only slightly absorbed, while monounsaturated acids were about the same of saturated acids having 6 carbons (Carroll, K. K., J. Nutr. 64: 399-410 (1957) at 408).
In other triglyceride metabolic studies in man only limited areas of predictability could be found. In one study a coconut oil fraction containing predominantly saturated, long chain triglycerides bearing 89% stearic (C18) and 11% palmitic (C16) acid residues were absorbed 31%, compared to 98% for corn oil (Hashim S. A., and Babayan, V. K., Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 31: S273-276 (1978)). However, it was found that increasing the stearic acid content of dietary fat did not per se decrease absorbability; rather, absorbability could be decreased by increasing the amount of tristearin present (i.e., triglycerides having three stearic residues; see Mattson, F. H., J. Nutr. 69: 338-342 (1959)). To this observation were added the findings that, in the presence or absence of dietary calcium and magnesium, stearic acid was well absorbed by rats when esterified on the 2-position of triglycerides having oleic acid at the 1- and 3-positions, but absorption decreased when a second stearic was added to the 1-position (Mattson, F., et al., J. Nutr. 209: 1682-1687 (1979), Table 3, page 1685). Stearic acid in the 1-position was well absorbed from triglycerides having oleic in the 2- and 3-positions in the absence, but not in the presence, of dietary calcium and magnesium (ibid.). When stearic was in both the 1- and 3-positions, absorption decreased with or without dietary calcium and magnesium, but the effect was more pronounced when calcium and magnesium were sufficient (ibid.).
The digestibility of palmitic acid has also been studied. Palmitic acid was better absorbed by rats when situated at the 2-positions of triglycerides than at the 1- or 3-positions in naturally occurring fats commonly fed to infants, and total fat absorption was adversely influenced by increasing the palmitic and stearic acid content in the 1- and 3-positions (Tomereili et al., J. Nutr. 95: 583-590 (1968)).
While triglycerides high in stearic acid are less well utilized than others, they also tend to be high melting. Tristearin is a solid at room temperature; the alpha form is a white powder that melts at 55° C., which, on solidification, reverts to the beta form that melts again at 72° C. The melting points of 1,3-distearin with short or medium chain fatty acids at the 2-position are high (Lovegren, N. V., and Gray, M. S., J. Amer. Oil Chem. Soc. 55: 310-316 (1978)). Symmetrical disaturated triglycerides of stearic acid and/or palmitic, often oleic at the 2-position, melt fairly uniformly near body temperature, and this property is of advantage for cocoa butter and hard butter substitutes (see, for example U.S. Pat. No. 4,364,868, U.S. Pat. No. 4,839,192 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,873,109), and hardstocks for margarines and shortenings (see, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,390,561, 4,447,462, 4,486,457, 4,865,866 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,883,684). Because of their functionality, high melting, high stearic fats have limited applications in food compositions requiring more plastic or liquid triglycerides.
Fats have been prepared by substituting acetic acid for a portion of the fatty acids occurring in ordinary fats or oils, thus producing triglycerides bearing short acetyl and long substituents. For saturated fats high in stearic acid, the substitution of acetyl groups for a portion of the stearyl groups lowers the melting point. These acetoglycerides were investigated during the 1950's and found to be digestible. Feeding studies indicated that the nutritive value of mono- and diacetin fats were essentially the same to animals as those fed the corresponding conventional triglycerides (Mattson, F. H., et al., J. Nutr. 59: 277-285 (1956), although acetooleins were more digestible than acetostearins (Ambrose, A. M., and Robbins, D. J., J. Nutr. 58: 113-124 (1956) and animals grew poorly when fed acetostearin as the sole dietary fat (Coleman, R. D., et al., J. Amer. Oil Chem. Soc. 40: 737-742 (1963)).
While lower melting than tristearin, acetostearins still have high melting points, limiting applications in food products requiring plastic or liquid fats. In fact, though melting points of compounds structurally related generally decrease with decreasing molecular weights (and mono- and distearins having medium to long saturated substituents follow this rule), the melting points of triglycerides in the C
18
C
n
C
18
and C
n
C
n
C
18
series where n=2 to 6, anomalously show the higher molecular weight C
6
(caproic acid) mono- and distearin derivatives to have lower melting points than the lower molecular weight C
2
(acetic acid) mono- and distearin derivatives (Jackson, F. L., et al., J. Amer. Chem. Soc. 73: 4280-4284 (1951) and Jackson, F. L., and Lutton, E. S., J. Amer. Chem. Soc. 74: 4827-4829 (1952)). Plastic fats containing acetostearins suggested for use as shortenings and the like were formulated to contain significant levels of unsaturated fats and typically employed significant level of fatty acids which would yield high saponification numbers or were liquid at room temperature (U.S. Pat. N
Cultor Food Science, Inc.
Knoble & Yoshida LLC
Paden Carolyn
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