Cholesterol-lowering food additives: lipase-catalysed preparation of phytosterol and phytostanol esters

• Published in: Food research international 2002, Vol.35 (2), p.177-181
• Main Authors: Weber, Nikolaus, Weitkamp, Petra, Mukherjee, Kumar D
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Candida rugosa lipase; Deodorizer distillate; Esterification/transesterification in vacuo; Food industries; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Steryl esters; Use and upgrading of agricultural and food by-products. Biotechnology
• ISSN: 0963-9969; 1873-7145
• DOI: 10.1016/S0963-9969(01)00180-6

We have shown recently that plant steryl and stanyl esters, used as plasma cholesterol-lowering food supplements, can be efficiently prepared from the sterols and stanols via lipase-catalysed esterification with fatty acids and transesterification with fatty acid methyl esters or triacylglycerols [Weber, N., Weitkamp, P., & Mukherjee, K. D. (2001). Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 49, 67–71]. In continuation of this work, sterols contained in three different steam distillates obtained from rapeseed oil by conventional deodorization or from rapeseed oil or a mixture of soybean and rapeseed oils by physical refining have been converted to a high degree in situ to the corresponding long-chain acyl esters via esterification and/or transesterification with fatty acids and/or triacylglycerols using lipase from Candida rugosa as biocatalyst in vacuo (20–40 mbar) at 40 °C. The steryl esters formed were purified to ⩾90% by deacidification, flash chromatography on silica gel and solvent fractionation using acetone-water (9:1,v/v).