Nano-Fortified Zero Trans Vegetable Butter from Palm Olein and Stearin Interesterified Fat Blend

This work and a series of successive works aim to subject various ratios of palm olein and palm stearin blends to chemical interesterification under different conditions of catalyst, temperature and time in order to obtain fat blends suitable for the production of vegetable butter (margarine) fortified with different natural vitamins and minerals and prepared by using nanotechnology. In this paper palm olein and palm stearin (70:30w/w) fat blend was chemically interesterified using 0.4 ml% of NaOH: glycerol: H O (1:2:3 w/w) or 0.3% 2 sodium methoxide catalysts under different conditions of time and temperature. The produced interesterified blends were used to prepare fortified vegetable butter samples using nanotechnology. Product evaluation was done before and after interesterification in order to determine its chemical and physical properties, fatty acid composition, trans fatty acids content, triglyceride structure and solid fat content of the fat blend, also prepared vegetable butter samples were evaluated for it’s chemical and physical properties. Results showed that chemical interesterification of palm olein and palm stearin blend modified its chemical and physical properties and its triglyceride structure. Also chemical interesterification by using both catalysts managed to give products with zero trans fatty acids. Using NaOH: glycerol: H O (1:2:3 w/w) as a catalyst gave better results than using sodium 2 methoxide catalyst regarding the product stability, melting point, triglyceride structure and solid fat content. Transmittence Electron Microscope (TEM) images showed that the particle size of all of the nanofortified vegetable butter samples lies in the nano-range.